


When it all Burns Down

by Jordan_Marine



Series: Chasing Down the Gods [5]
Category: The Talon Saga - Julie Kagawa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And he's not happy about it, Canon-Typical Violence, Dante still has a bullet lodged in his 9th thoracic, Forgiveness, Gen, Minor Character Death, Redemption, Trip to China, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Wesley Higgins/Riley | Cobalt (implied), do not take advice from this fanfiction on how to get a tattoo, go to a professional, tattooing, where no one actually speaks Chinese, you guys know me by now and I don't write romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-01-22 11:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 48,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21301127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jordan_Marine/pseuds/Jordan_Marine
Summary: Dante knows what he's done— the good and the bad. He has reached his redemption. As Talon turns its gaze away from the Underground and to the less-defended land of China, and Dante finds that he can give aid, he might be able to reach for forgiveness, as well. Or perhaps let the need for it slip through his fingers.
Relationships: Ember Hill & Dante Hill
Series: Chasing Down the Gods [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1195402
Comments: 24
Kudos: 5





	1. Ember

**Author's Note:**

> Better late than never, right?
> 
> Thus marks the beginning of Chasing Down the Gods, part 5 (!): the continuation of Dante's increasingly painful redemption arc. This story is NOT finished, and I don't plan to post any more of it until after November, but I thought it would be nice to give you this as a gift for your patience.
> 
> I promise not to kill Dante Hill. If I've done my job, that line now fills you with fear.

It still felt strange, sometimes, to expect to fall asleep in the same place she woke up. Not that Ember was complaining about it— she might have once had problems with the monotony, but now there was something comforting about the stability, about the rhythm of the day. Even though the cornfields had been cleared for the harvest, the scenery stayed mostly the same. The soldiers patrolling the grounds, hatchlings at the checkpoints, sounds of training in the backyard. It had all become an expected, comfortable rhythm. There had been one or two close calls with infighting, but no one had been exiled. There were even a few tentative friendships between the two groups. Riley and Martin had talked about the possibility of starting integrated patrols as a way to force the two groups to interact more. Prove to the Order that dragons weren’t demons. Prove to the underground that the soldier weren’t soulless.

Still, things could be better. Or, one specific thing could be better.

Stupid twin.

“Are you ditching Dante?”

Ember looked up. Mist stood beside her, leaning on the porch railing. Her silver hair was kept up under a knitted beanie, and she wore a bulky sweater with snowflakes knitted onto the side. Ember was in similar garb and still shivering from the cold. Turns out, winter in the Midwest was actually  _ cold _ . There was a fireplace inside, but it was also crowded and noisy inside, and she had to adjust to the weather eventually. She was a long way from New Mexico.

“Isn’t this normally the time that you go down to make sure he doesn’t starve?” Mist continued.

“Tristan offered to take food down. I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity and get some air,” Ember responded with a shrug. Mist raised an eyebrow. “He said that it was because I looked stressed, but I think that he was looking for an excuse to get away from the Order for a few minutes.”

“Ah, the endless suffering of an injured patient and his well-meaning friends,” Mist sighed wistfully, making Ember laugh in spite of what they were talking about. “He seems to be doing better, though, whenever I see him. Has your boyfriend moved back into his room yet, or is he still sleeping on the stormshed floor?”

“I’m pretty sure that he’s sharing Tristan’s bed.”

“Are you jealous?” Mist teased.

Ember snorted. “Even if I  _ were,  _ it’s not like I’d have a say in the matter. I couldn’t separate the dream team if I tried. Tristan’s still in recovery, and Garret needs reassurance that he’s not about to drop dead. They’ve been friends for years. It’s not my place to interfere.”

She  _ wasn’t  _ jealous. Not in the slightest, no matter how much Peter Matthews alluded to homosexuality and infidelity whenever Tristan’s and Garret’s absence came up. She was pretty sure that Martin took more offense than she did; he looked like he was starting to tow the line on whether or not it was acceptable to murder a subordinate, if his side-eye had anything to say about it.

“I can’t tell if St. Anthony has the worst or the best luck out there.” Mist walked over and sat down next to Ember. “I mean, a building fell on him and he was stabbed in the head by Lilith herself. Which  _ sucks.  _ But he also lived through having a  _ building  _ fall on him and being  _ stabbed  _ in the  _ head  _ by a  _ Lilith. _ ”

Ember chuckled weakly. It  _ was  _ a miracle that he was still alive. It was a miracle that he was walking. And he had a lot of people who cared about him enough to offer help.

However, Tristan was tired of being hovered over, and was starting to make it obvious. Case in point: he had asked if he could deliver lunch to Dante. That had been thirty minutes ago. Ember was starting to suspect that he was hiding in the basement. Not that she minded; Dante needed some company other than her and a deck of cards. Even if Tristan wasn’t exactly fit for a complicated conversation.

“He’s lucky that you were there, that’s for sure,” Ember said. “I still can’t believe that Lilith is dead. I kind of imagined her as invincible.”

“So did I. She was three hundred, you know. There was a second that I thought the bullets would just… break on her skin, or something. Or that she’d be able to dodge them like in the Matrix.”

“ _ Matrix?”  _ Ember wrinkled her nose. “ _ That’s _ what you’re basing your expectations on? A movie about a hostile robot takeover who use humans for energy instead of literally anything else?”

“I was panicking, okay? You try to fight the leader of the viper program for the past half century, trained by the Elder Wyrm herself, and you don’t exactly think about the rational course of action.” Mist shoved Ember’s shoulder.

“Wait, Lilith was—”

“Trained by your mother dearest?” Mist finished. Ember nodded. “Yeah. Fun perk of working for the Archivist, I’ve read through a lot of service files, so I know a lot about big names in the organization. Lilith was trained by the Elder Wyrm along with one other who died in the eighteen hundreds. And I, Mist Anderson, twenty-one years old, decided that it would be a good idea to shoot her with a pistol.”

“And it  _ worked. _ ”

“And it worked!”

“I am so glad that you’re on our side,” Ember said. Mist grinned. “Seriously.”

“You’d be lost without me.”

“Sure.”

Mist laughed, then tried to conceal a shiver. Ember had long since stopped trying. She had half a mind to go back inside.

“I’m glad I’m here, too,” Mist responded softly.

“Mist, Ember.” 

Ember craned her neck and gave a crooked grin at the visitor. Tristan nodded to her and shut the door, shivering at the chill in the air. He squinted and blinked a few times at the light, but he looked more annoyed at its existence than disoriented or pained. The hair around his temple was starting to grow back, covering the jagged scar that stood out on his skin.

“Speak of the devil, and he shall appear,” Mist said with a smirk. “Hey, Tristan.”

“Hey yourself,” Tristan replied. Ember looked between the two of them. They were certainly acting more casual than they normally did around  _ other  _ dragons and soldiers. Tristan sat down beside Ember. “Dante is still bored, but he’s okay other than that. He’s very apologetic about crushing me under a chapel.” Ember winced. “Don’t give me that, I’m not about to tell the Order what happened. Besides, I’m… mostly recovered. If we were at a Chapterhouse, I’d probably be allowed to get the various screws in my bones taken out.”

“Yeah, now they have bigger problems to worry about,” Mist muttered. Tristan furrowed his brow slightly— Ember doubted he had caught what she said— but didn’t ask her to repeat herself.

“Anyway. Ms. Jade—”

“ _ Ms. Jade? _ ” Ember repeated.

“—asked me to send you two and Garret over to the command room as soon as you could manage. Apparently, she has news to share with the underground,” he said. “Any questions or things that I should know?”

“Garret was looking for you,” Ember said.

“Garret was… oh. Right. I guess that I didn’t tell him where I was going, did I?” Tristan winced. “Well, I need to pass on the message to him, anyway, so I’ll try to put his concerns to rest while I’m at it.”

“How is your headspace?” Mist asked, gesturing up towards her own head.

“Better than normal, but still in the process of improvement. No dizzy spells in twelve hours, so that’s been a nice change. No need to be concerned for my health, Miss Anderson. Concern is ill-fitting for you.”

“This isn’t concern,” Mist said dryly. “I don’t want to lose the one Order member who I can actually stand, other than Garret.”

“Yeah… I understood ‘ _ this isn’t concern’,  _ and  _ ‘Garret.’  _ Nothing else. Probably for the best, if I know what normally comes out of your mouth.”

“Are—” Ember looked between the two of them. “Are you two  _ friends? _ ”

Mist shrugged. “We  _ did  _ go on a suicide mission together, remember. Once you give mouth-to-mouth to someone, you can’t exactly go back.”

“Wait, what?” Tristan asked, eyes wide and indignant. “You did  _ what? _ ”

“Of course that’s the thing I say that you can understand,” she muttered, before going back to the slightly over-pronounced speech that everyone had taken to using around him. “You were dead for forty-five seconds. What else was I supposed to do?”

“I was…” Tristan shook his head. “Okay, those were two answers to questions that I never asked and never wanted to know. I’m going to leave before you tell me anything else that I don’t want to—”

“You also flatlined twice in the ambulance cab, according to Wes.”

“I’m so glad that I didn’t understand that.”

“I said, you also  _ died  _ twice in the—”

“Fuck off, Mist!” Tristan flipped them off as he turned and walked towards the storm shelter. Ember rubbed the back of her neck, even as Mist laughed softly to herself. She knew that Tristan technically died— Wes told Garret when Tristan’s pulse stopped, and told them the moment Mist found it again. But thinking about how close she came to losing one of her friends made her sick.

“Did you really need to rub that in?” Ember asked.

Mist snorted and stood. “Look. You and Garret can be well meaning and supportive, and that’s good. He needs that. But he also needs someone who’ll act normal and respond to his snark with more snark. Come on, Jade awaits.”

“So you  _ are  _ friends.”

Mist gave her a look. “Are we?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I asked.”

Mist rolled her eyes and opened the door, letting the warm air and sounds of chatter wash over them. There were a few brief greetings as they crossed the main room— Mist had become popular after her mission to the labs. Ember wasn’t sure what Mist thought about that, with being a former basilisk who generally excelled at being invisible. She hoped that she was enjoying the hero worship at least a  _ little. _

God knew that the other two members of that mission weren’t.

Mist knocked twice on Riley, Wes, and Garret’s room before entering without waiting for a  _ ‘come in’ _ . It had become the underground’s unofficial command room and occasional meeting room, and Ember was still impressed with how relatively spotless it was kept because of that. Riley and Wes were in their usual position, with Wes sitting at the desk— moved to an angle where Wes could still see everyone without craning his neck— and Riley leaning over his shoulder to look at the laptop. Jade had taken up her spot in the corner of the room, her eyes dark and solemn. 

Ember felt a cold inkling of fear in the back of her head. Jade had to have big news, if she had called a meeting.

“Will Garret be joining us?” Jade asked as Ember sat down on the foot of the bed. Garret’s bed, she was pretty sure.

“St. Anthony said he’d find him shortly, but he may be on a perimeter patrol,” Mist replied. 

Jade nodded. She checked her flip phone, furrowed her brow, and put it back in her pocket. Ember bit the inside of her cheek. Jade wasn’t one to show signs of nerves. She was the person that people would go to when they were nervous. She checked the phone again.

“We could start without him,” Riley offered. “Whatever the problem is, I’m sure that we can reach a decision without him. I assume it has something to do with China?”

“Yes,” Jade put the phone back in her pocket and straightened. “I may have to leave again.”

Ember looked at the floor and saw Riley close his eyes, looking absolutely exhausted for a few moments. Ember knew that Jade’s responsibilities were to her home country first and resistance second, but she had grown used to the Shen Lung being part of everyone’s lives. She was a good constant to have.

“What’s the problem this time?” Riley asked, a bit of a groan to his voice. “I thought the council wasn’t called very often. We kinda need to keep everyone in the same area, right now.”

“I don’t want to leave either, but I’ve gotten news of something… important.”

“Could you be a bit more specific?” Wes asked tersely, shutting his laptop.

“Not in any way that would be helpful,” she said, a bit of a growl entering her voice. “Many of the Shen Lung don’t put much trust in electronic devices, even if you were the one to give it to me. However, I have been speaking with a…” she took a breath. “A fellow Shen-Lung who I care very deeply for. I gave him this number in case of emergency right before the Night of Fang and Fire. I never expected him to  _ use  _ it.” She crossed her arms. “He doesn’t put much trust in me, which makes me even more afraid that whatever is happening is something that is out of control.” 

Ember furrowed her brow. Someone who Jade cared for, but who didn’t trust her. That sounded shady off the bat.

“What I do know with certainty is that the Night of Fang and Fire happened in China as well, and many are still reeling from that loss,” she continued. “Whatever problem they are facing now, they’ll need all the help they can get. And chances are, we all know who’s behind this.”

“Talon,” Ember muttered. Of course it was. 

“This person who you’re talking to,” Riley said. “Are they someone that we can trust not to lie or overestimate the situation?”

“Yes. His name is Xinguang. He’s honest, and he believes in the rules and traditions of the Shen Lung culture, including isolation from foreign matters. So much so that he nearly took my place on the council a decade ago, despite being under a century old. Trust me when I say that he wouldn’t call me unless he was  _ truly  _ desperate. He barely accepted my phone number when I gave it to him.”

“Should we trust someone who dislikes you?” Riley asked, a hint of reproach entering his voice.

Jade gave a wry smile. “He may disapprove of my antics, but I trust him. I’ve known him for longer than you’ve been alive.” She let out a breath. “I could go to China alone to speak with him, but that would leave the both of us undefended, and if Talon is behind whatever he wants to speak about, then I would be unable to provide the most accurate information.” Ember saw her chew on the inside of her cheek, and for a moment, she looked truly afraid. “I do not want to leave.”

There was a silence. 

“If it’s any consolation, we don’t want you to leave, either,” Mist offered.

“It is not.”

Mist shrugged helplessly with a grimace. There was a hunch in her shoulders that Ember had grown to recognize. Mist was feeling things that she didn’t want to care about. She wanted Jade to stay.

Ember wanted Jade to stay.

“So… you have no idea what’s happening in China,” Riley said softly.

“Xinguang said that—” she paused, took a deep breath, and continued, “he told me that Shen-Lungs were going missing, and that he was afraid. I’m not normally the person he goes to when he’s afraid. I fear that— that the people he normally goes to are the people who are missing. He refuses to say more over a phone.”

Jade looked away as she said it, staring out the window. Her fist clenched and unclenched. Ember started chewing on her lip.

“If there is a problem in China concerning Talon, I fear that I will not be able to give any aid. I am not an Elder, nor am I… the most respected person in the country. And for good reason, unfortunately.” The last part was said at a mutter, but she looked away from the window and directly at Riley. “Cobalt. I have given you all of the aid that I could spare over the past months. I would like you to give Xinguang secure passage here. It will be safer than me leaving for China, and it gives us more of a chance to figure out what’s really going on.”

Riley straightened at the idea. Ember could practically  _ see  _ him weighing the consequences in his mind, trying to figure out if it was safe enough to let yet another person know where they were.

“We’d have to make sure that no one could intercept him, and that he’d agree to set terms. One of which would possibly be that he’d never know exactly where he was,” Riley said. Jade nodded. “And even then, we... might not be able to help. We have no idea what’s going on. If there’s a thing going on in Asia… damn, it’s on the other side of the  _ world. _ We can’t leave this place undefended, either.” He let out a breath. “And I’m realizing that this is probably how you’re feeling all the time.”

“If there’s a  _ thing _ going on in Asia, then I highly doubt that including the soldiers would be a good idea. In theory, they could hold down the fort, or we could move everyone to one of their safehouses,” Mist pointed out. “I know that they have that one in Oklahoma. Knowing the Order, that’s not the only fallback point.”

“We have to at least figure out what the situation is,” Ember said. “Jade’s been helping us for two months straight.”

Riley put his head in his hands. “I know, I know, I’m not stupid. Or heartless. I’m just…” He gave a soft groan. “I thought that people would stop going  _ ‘mysteriously missing’  _ once we allied with the Order and blew up Talon’s killing machines. And if this safehouse is compromised, we don’t have anything else to fall back on.”

“Excuse me?” Wes asked. Ember’s head snapped towards him just in time to see Wes smack Riley in the ribs. “I’ve been spending the past month securing other safehouses in case we need to fall back or disperse, and you say that we don’t have  _ anything?  _ Have you been paying attention at all?”

“What, paying attention to your caffeine-induced rambling at two in the morning? No, I’ve been trying to sleep, because unlike  _ you,  _ I produce melatonin,” Riley said. He elbowed Wes sharply, but it was soft enough that Wes could swat his hand away. “But… you have a point.”

“Damn right I do,” he said, a hint of exasperation entering his voice. “Riley, I’m just as paranoid as you, but Jade’s right in saying that we owe her.”

“Okay. Okay…” Riley breathed. He looked at Jade and offered a weak smile. “I suppose that this is a bad time to mention why isolationism doesn’t often work.”

“It is.” She said flatly.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Are you sure you trust this guy?”

“Xinguang is…” she paused again, closing her eyes. “He is family. He may deny it, and we may not know each other exceptionally well, but… that’s an important bond on our side of the world. I trust him this far, and I cannot abandon him if he is afraid. My only fear is that he is speaking with  _ me  _ rather than anyone who he gets along with better.”

Ember went cold. She saw Riley’s eyes widen.

Jade had been helping them for months. She had been putting herself in the line of fire against Talon, making herself  _ known.  _ Ember had a feeling that Talon wasn’t above killing a family to make a point.

She had a feeling that Jade’s thoughts were on a similar strain.

“The Order needs to be informed about a visitor.” Wes was the one to break the silence. He looked a bit more pale than usual. Ember remembered that he had a living family, as well. “And Xinguang needs to know that the Order is on the grounds. We can’t risk an outbreak of violence.”

“When we can get Garret in here, we’ll make sure he can inform them,” Riley said. “Do you think you can coordinate a plane flight from China? We can meet him at a private airport and drive him here. He’ll never know the exact location. And he’ll have to be okay with that.”

Jade nodded. “I’ll make sure he knows.”

“Well, then,” Riley sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “I guess we have a plane flight to organize, don’t we?”


	2. Dante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive! I've edited this chapter... four-ish? times, so this is as good as it can get. Thank you for your patience.

The room was exactly eleven paces wide.

_ One-two, three-four, five-six, seven-eight, nine-ten, eleven.  _ Turn. The movements sent a sharp, sparking pain up to his neck, but he made them. He had gotten used to the ways he could move and  _ couldn’t  _ move. He had gotten used to the pain. He couldn’t quite  _ ignore  _ it, because it never quite went away, but it had settled into a baseline he could manage. 

_ One-two, three-four, five-six, seven-eight, nine-ten, eleven.  _ Turn.  _ One-two, three-four, five-six, seven-eight, nine-ten, eleven.  _ Turn.  _ One-two, three-four, five-six, seven-eight— _

The door at the top of the stairs creaked open. Dante halted, looking at the clock. 12:30. That was… on time, actually.

“Any news?” he asked.

Ember shut the door behind her and walked down the stairs, skipping the last one that creaked. Dante leaned up against the wall, elbow propped on one of the shelves, trying to keep his posture as straight and casual-looking as possible. She also tried to look as casual-looking, too, considering the question he had asked.

He knew that she was hiding something from him. She wasn’t visiting as often, instead sending Tristan. Dante didn’t mind the alternative company— considering that Dante had nearly killed him, he wasn’t nearly as hostile as he should be— but when Ember  _ did  _ come down, she was distracted. Something was happening on the ground floor that Dante wanted to  _ know. _

“You know that I’m going to report this to Wes, right?” Ember said. Dante turned expression turned to a hard glare. “Dante, he specifically told you that unless you want to tear your— your  _ spine muscles— _ ”

“Eloquent.”  _ Extensors. They’re called extensors. _

“Quit being a smartass. Wes was down here  _ two _ days ago. He said that if you want the pain in your back to go away and actually free up your range of motion and make things better in the long term, you need to stop straining yourself with the pacing for a few days. He gave you things to do instead.”

Dante repressed the urge to roll his eyes. “The pain isn’t too bad. And I did those things. Now I want to smooth out my limp, because it’s been  _ two months. _ ”

It was Ember’s turn to glare. Dante glared back.

“The limp isn’t going away. We both know that.”

Dante looked away. He wanted to tell her that saying that was a low blow, but he knew perfectly well that it was true. Wes had confirmed it two days ago; even if he  _ did  _ find a way to remove the bullet, his ninth thoracic was still fractured, and it hadn’t healed properly. Walking like a normal person was off the table. Running for long distances was off the table. Rock climbing in general was an impossibility. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t at least  _ try  _ to make it better.

“Sorry to be harsh,” Ember muttered.

Dante sat back down on his cot with a wince. Ember sat down next to him and crossed her legs. 

“I know it sucks to be down here,” Ember said. “I’m sorry that things are like this.”

“We both know I deserve it.”

“You…” Ember bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah. You do. But if everyone in this underground was locked away for their mistakes in their chosen organization, we wouldn’t have an underground  _ or _ an alliance. People will see that eventually. They just need… time.”

“Yeah… time,” Dante sighed. He blew a few strands of hair out of his face, but they fell right back into place. He needed a haircut. “So? Any news from above?” There was a silence. “C’mon. I know you’re hiding something.”

“No I’m not.”

“You can’t lie to me. I know your tells.” Dante said. Ember sent him a tired, disapproving look that was half-hearted at best. “You know I do.”

“Chameleon.”

“ _ Viper. _ ”

Ember winced. “Okay, then. Sorry.” 

There was a silence. Dante propped his chin on his hand and didn’t break it. 

Ember squirmed. “I know what you’re trying to do. I can just leave.” 

He kept staring. 

“You have enough to deal with without worrying about Talon and St. George and… everything. You don’t need another problem after the months you’ve had.” 

Dante looked pointedly over his room. 

“Don’t give me that, you have a recovery to take into account.” 

Dante went back to staring at her. 

Ember gave a deadpan glare. “You’re a jerk.”

Dante smiled. He kept staring.

“Yeah, yeah, you win. There’s news. Apparently there’s something going on in East Asia,” Ember said. Dante straightened. “We don’t know many details yet, but an informant is coming over today to tell us more. Jade trusts him. She doesn’t seem to  _ like _ him very much, but she trusts him. Besides, we don’t need to like him.” 

Dante clenched his jaw and looked away. He knew about some of the operations in East Asia.  _ He  _ was supposed to be the one to visit them, after all. He had done his research about Talon’s plans. He knew that, if he were allowed upstairs, he could probably help. But even his most recent information he had was two months old, and some of it was more guesses and half-truths. And he  _ wasn’t  _ allowed upstairs. For good reason, too.

It  _ was  _ for good reason. He needed to remember that.

“You… wouldn’t happen to know anything about some Talon conspiracy in East Asia, would you?” Ember asked.

Dante stayed silent.

“Dante?”

“I don’t know. All of my information is two months old, and they didn’t include me in  _ everything,  _ but… I don’t know,” Dante shook his head. He might as well give what he could. “Talon wanted China on their side by the time their vessel army was finished. If they couldn’t do  _ that,  _ they planned to invade it and take over the council by force. Kill the largest figures in the country and assimilate everyone else into Talon’s system. They said that China had too much information and history to wipe them completely off the map. I mean, they have  _ old  _ magic. That’s a resource that we don’t have anymore. That’s the basics of what I know for certain.”

Ember was staring at him, and he couldn’t quite read her expression. “And what about what you know  _ not  _ for certain?”

“Rumors. Offhand comments. A conversation with Lilith that we had after… after Faith died,” Dante shuddered. The worst conversation of his life. She hadn’t meant to tell him so much. “But it’s probably nothing. From what I could tell, what they talked about was a worst-case scenario plan. No one wanted to enact it. And, again, my information is two months old. And made out of rumors. Who knows what they changed since then.”

Ember put her elbows on her knees, staring at the ground. Dante almost made a comment about how different she looked when she was  _ thinking,  _ just to break the tension, but it didn’t seem the time. If Talon  _ had  _ enacted that plan… nothing good would come of it.  _ Lilith  _ hadn’t even liked the idea that much, and she was the one that made it. That was why she was happy about the Vessels. So they could use intimidation instead of unnecessary carnage.

When the chief Viper said  _ unnecessary carnage… _

China had too much to offer. Right? Not even Talon would go too far. Except Dante knew his history books. He knew that the only Feathered Serpents still alive were those who had assimilated into Talon. He knew that the Nagas of India were extinct because of the combined actions of Talon and St. George. Shen-Lungs were next in that order.

“Okay, stand up,” Ember sighed. Dante cocked his head to the side. Ember heaved him up, and Dante had to bite his tongue, because  _ maybe  _ Wes was right about laying down more often and focusing on stretches rather than walking. “Can you move?”

“I can stand  _ fine. _ What are you doing?” Dante shoved her back slightly before she could move to support his weight, even though everything from his ribcage down felt disjointed. He could still feel his feet. That was enough.

“I’m jailbreaking you,” Ember said. Dante blinked. “What? You have information that we could use. You’ve been here for nearly three weeks. You can’t do anything to make up for what you did by rotting in the basement.”

“Is that smart?”

“I don’t care.  _ I’m  _ not the smart twin,” Ember said, a ghost of a smirk on her lips. Dante snorted and rolled his eyes. “But I do think it’ll be smart in the long run. If Talon  _ is  _ messing with China, information is something that we’ll need. Riley knows that. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. Hell, we’ve taken information from some cryptid asshole rogue Wyrm who tried to eat Garret, and that ended  _ great  _ for us.” Dante tried not to let the sheer confusion show on his face, because he doubted Ember would fill him in. Maybe he could ask Tristan for details if he came down again. “Can you do stairs?”

“ _ Yes. _ ”

“Are you just saying that because you want to believe that even though you haven’t actually used the stairs for—”

“For hell’s sake, sis. It’s not like I’m parylized.”

“Forgive me for worrying.”

Dante grabbed the banister and started climbing the stairs, stumbling every few steps. He could, in fact,  _ do stairs,  _ even if it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. Wes said that the cold was making his muscles contract.  _ He  _ thought that his body was being overdramatic. When he reached the top landing, Ember pushed open the door— he supposed she  _ wouldn’t  _ lock it behind her when she was visiting— and led him down the hall to Riley’s room. She knocked sharply.

“It’s me. And… my brother. He might have info on Talon’s end of things, so I thought it would be best to let him out of the basement for the meeting.” She opened the door. “Before you yell at me for not asking first— Oh, Garret’s in here.” 

_ Dammit.  _ Dante was pretty sure that Garret didn’t know anything. Tristan told him as such.

“Why’s Dante in the basement?” Garret asked. Dante limped into the room, staying near the wall. Mist sat on one of the beds. Wes was at his desk, per usual, glaring at Ember. “Did something happen?”

“Yeah,” Wes muttered. Ember’s eyes widened.  _ Noticeably.  _ “He caught a skin infection a few days ago. Nothing bad, but I didn’t want to deal with an outbreak, and he kept trying to strain himself because  _ some  _ idiot thinks that he can stubborn himself into being healthy.” 

Dante took a breath and started to edge into the corner, where he could see everyone and lean against the wall in a nearly-casual way. For a moment, he thought Wes would tell him what had happened, and as much as Dante knew everyone trusted Garret, he had killed a lot of people who were probably his friends. He had dropped a  _ chapel  _ on his best friend. The less people who knew about that night, the better.

“Riley’s going to be pissed about Dante,” Wes continued, and the tone of his voice showed his own opinions on Dante’s impromptu parol. “But if he has any information to share, it’ll be best to have it.  _ You’ll  _ be the one to explain this to Riley, though. And Dante?” Dante tried to look innocent as Wes glared at him. “I never took the hippocratic oath, so if you hurt yourself, I have no obligation to help you. Sit down.”

Dante took a seat at the foot of the bed without protest. Ember checked her watch.

“Who else is supposed to be here for the meeting?” Ember asked Garret.

“Just Martin. But he said that he might be a few minutes late,” Garret said. He let out a sigh. “Tristan was going to come, but he fainted about an hour ago and is being held by Doctor Grace to make sure that he’s not having any serious complications. Which is why Martin might be late.”

Dante winced. He didn’t miss that Mist’s face also scrunched up when Garret spoke. She and Tristan must have grown closer over the past few weeks. 

Suicide missions did that to people.

“But the good news is that Tristan was complaining about being held  _ ‘hostage’  _ by our medic, so I think he’s okay. Just tried to do too much too quickly,” Garret said. He looked at his watch. “They should be here by—”

The door opened. 

“Technically, we didn’t forbid sparring,” Cobalt said. He was walking backwards, completely at-ease doing it, followed by Lieutenant Martin. “And no one got hurt.”

“Williams is going to have bruises for weeks,” Martin said drily. He stood at perfect attention as he scanned the room. His eyes narrowed slightly as he saw Dante. Dante stared back, careful not to look challenging, but like he was supposed to be there.

“So will Astatine. But they weren’t fighting out of malice. They both agreed to it. They even... set terms of what they were allowed to do, which is more than  _ I’d  _ expect from a sparring match.”

Dante furrowed his brow. Granted, of all of the hatchlings that he know, Astatine  _ would  _ be the one to spar with a soldier of St. George. She was the only one who would find fighting  _ fun  _ while also being able to restrain herself. Still, that was towing the line dangerously close to fighting, which could lead to exile. What was she  _ thinking? _

“Those terms were incredibly relaxed, from what I saw,” Martin said. “If this is going to become a regular occurrence, there need to be set rules that ensure no bloodshed or broken bones. Or broken alliances.”

“I agree, but considering that  _ this  _ match was before a time of set rules, we can’t punish them for sparring. Besides, I think we have bigger issues to deal with today. We can focus on that  _ after  _ the meeting with…” Cobalt caught his eyes, and his eyes narrowed. Dante looked at the floor. “I wasn’t aware that Dante Hill would be joining us.”

“I invited him,” Ember said before Riley could speak. “I know that he shouldn’t be up here, but he has the most recent information on Talon, and he was close to this aspect of their expansion, apparently. If any of us can piece together what’s happening in Asia, it’ll be him.”

Riley’s gaze was still drilling into his skull. Dante decided to look at the door, in case he needed to bolt from the room. Jade entered the room as well, her gaze settling on him, as well. An unfamiliar dragon trailed behind her.

“It’ll be best to get all of the information upfront before we decide to do anything,” Ember continued. 

Cobalt was still silent. Dante could feel his gaze burning into his skin. And truth was, he couldn’t blame him for the anger.

“Jade? Thoughts?” Cobalt said.

“Information is information,” Jade said calmly. Or perhaps just with concealed emotions. “I’m more concerned about current matters.”

“What did he do?” Martin asked.

“He caught a skin infection and nearly caused a pandemic before I could lock him in the basement,” Wes said casually. Wesley Higgins, Dante noted, was a good liar. Shameless about it, too.

Dante’s gaze shifted to the one unfamiliar face in the room. The other Shen-Lung. He was a young adult, if he had to guess, a good deal older than Cobalt but younger than Jade. His eyes were the same black as hers, and they also shared long, straight hair, but they didn’t share many similarities beyond that. His skin tone was several shades lighter, his face was narrower, and he was wearing more traditional clothes than her tank top and canvas jacket. He took in all of them silently, the only change in expression being when his eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly at the soldiers. 

“This is Xuan Xinguang,” Jade introduced. “You can call him Starlight, if it’s too hard.”

“You may not,” he said. Jade’s lips twitched slightly, but her posture was heavy. Her eyes were red around the edges, too.

“ _ Apparently,  _ the Elder Council told him not to come here.”

Xinguang glared at her. He looked incredibly uncomfortable, stiff shouldered in the presence of strangers, but Dante could see that his skin around his eyes was slightly red, and he had probably been picking at his fingernails recently.

“If they are angry at me, you can imagine how they feel about you,” he said, a bit of a jab in his voice. Jade didn’t flinch. “But, yes. They told me not to speak to foreigners or get caught up in their war, as you have done. They don’t believe it wise to put faith in this… group, even if they are not part of Talon. However… in light of recent change, I believe it would be wise to seek out allies.”

There was a pause. Xinguang stared at the floor, arms crossed. His gaze kept flicking to Jade.

“So? Introduce me to your new friends?” he asked. Dante noted that his accent was heavier than Jade’s— every syllable distinct, yet certain sounds being cut out entirely. Dante doubted he spoke with English speakers very often.

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Jade shook herself. “You’ve already met Lan-se.” She gestured to Cobalt, who gave a wave, completely unsurprised at the name change. “This is Nanren.” She gestured to Ember. “The humans are Mao and Lieutenant Huoxing.”

“Soldiers, I assume?” he looked them over, a lip curling slightly.

“We take allies we get, these days,” Jade said. “The other dragon is…” she furrowed her brow. Dante waited. It seemed unnecessary to translate their names— they weren’t calling Xinguang by a western name— but then again, he highly doubted that Jade was actually named  _ Jade.  _ Having more familiar names would make things go smoother for the more skittish dragon in the room.

“Diyu,” she decided on. Xinguang didn’t look shocked by the name, so he assumed that it translated politely. That was kind of her.

“It is… a pleasure to meet everyone. I wish it could be under different cases.” He gave something that was more of a head tilt than a bow.

“So do I,” Cobalt responded. “Jade has given us a lot of help over the past… three-ish months, so it’s high time we return the favor.” Apparently, he was capable of being polite. “So… what’s the situation?”

Xinguang opened his mouth to speak, then look away. His gaze flitted to Jade several times.

Jade gave a heavy sigh and closed her eyes. 

“A dragon by the name of Xuan Zhinu is dead. She’s… she  _ was  _ on the Elder Council. It’s different from the Council that I’m on, which is called during crisis. They’re a more permanent structure. They keep our history and traditions, and also select members of the Council, as well. And… they took heavy losses during the Night of Fang and Fire. I told them of what was to come, but I hadn’t expected  _ adult  _ Vessels, so they were unprepared. After the— the death of Xuan Zhinu, there are only five remaining.” She was tense as she said this. “Xinguang explained this to me on the car ride over. He said that there was no sign of a vessel attack, as the surrounding village was not injured and saw nothing.”

There was a thick silence. Jade crossed her arms, her face a stony mask that showed a careful nothing and told Dante everything he needed to know.

“Lan and Yin also died. During the night of the… Talon attacks,” Xinguang said. Jade looked at him sharply. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. But you never got along with her, and you were… away.” he pursed his lips. “Again.”

“You should of—” she paused and took a deep breath, her lips twitching in and out of a snarl. The room was entirely silent. “We will talk about this after.”

“I think you’ve been replaced on the council, too.”

“I don’t care,” Jade snapped. She took a breath. “Is— You have told me of… of Zhinu. Is she the only one that died after the Vessel attacks, or are there others?”

“No. I… I was afraid that she died because of you, so I have searched for others, and there are more. So it isn’t your doing, and I’m not in danger. Probably. Most of the ones who are dead are the ones that don’t interact with our society. They’re completely isolated or they’ve… they’ve… what is the word…” He muttered something in Mandarin.

“Those who have assimilated into modern society,” Jade supplied.

“They’re eliminating the ones no one will miss,” Riley said softly. “ _ Damn.  _ So it’s really not about your family.”

“That’s my thought, too,” Xinguang agreed. “It’s… I don’t know the word in English.”

“Genocide,” Riley supplied. “They did it with the Feathered Serpents, they’ll do it with the Shen-Lungs. The way they’re going about it, by the time anyone will decide to do something about it, it’ll be too late. The people will be too weak.”

Dante felt a chill come over him. This was not Talon’s first plan. Their plan was to  _ integrate  _ the outliers and young children. He didn’t think they’d actually go through with their backup plan— Talon was weak enough as it was, without the Vessel program. And Lilith was  _ dead. _ But there couldn’t be another explanation.

He had never been more thankful that he was good at getting information he wasn’t supposed to have.

“This makes no sense,” Martin said. “We destroyed the Vessels. They don’t have the power to destroy an entire race. How many Chinese dragons are there?”

“Approximately six thousand, according to the census. We took it eighteen years ago,” Jade said. “But your organization has been targeting us for the past year and a half, and I don’t know how many fell during the Night of Fang and Fire.”

“Five hundred different temples were targeted during the Night of Fang and Fire,” Dante said. Eyes turned to him. He swallowed. “Of those five hundred, about four hundred suceeded.”

“Who are you in this?” Xinguang asked.

“Diyu,” Dante said, and promptly learned that Xuan Xingaung had a  _ glare. _

“He defected from Talon two months ago. Would you like to expand upon the math lesson?” Cobalt said. His eyes were hard, but his face was drawn and ashen.

“Talon planned on integrating East Asia after the Vessel program was running better. They’d kill the leaders and those completely bound by tradition. Once you cut a culture off from its history and the structure of organization they’re using, they’re easier to manipulate. However… there was a backup plan, for if things went south. That they tried very hard not to tell me about.”

“Then how do we know that whatever comes out of your mouth is true?” Martin asked.

“We... don’t. I probably don’t have the whole story,” Dante said. “But, turns out, older dragons tend to forget that hatchlings know how to listen to conversations that they aren’t directly participating in. I’m very good at getting information that I’m not supposed to have. Ember can vouch for that.” 

Dante took a breath. “I don’t think they’re using Vessels. They’re a finite resource. They wouldn’t be brought out until they’re sure that this plan will work. That they’ll be able to… kill  _ everyone. _ ” Dante swallowed. “Or, at least enough that East Asia won’t be able to recover. I don’t know the exact numbers to make that happen.”

“But Talon doesn’t have that manpower without Vessels,” Martin said.

Dante swallowed. “Well, when I spoke to Lilith, I gathered that they were using the superelite Vipers. I know the Viper program is only a few hundred years old, and a bunch of them died when we killed the Patriarch in...”

“1887,” Martin and Garret said. Dante saw Cobalt wince slightly.

“Lilith was  _ supposed  _ to lead this, but she’s dead, so I have no idea who would be on the team. But, from what I can guess, they’re probably planning on wiping out  _ everything.  _ They probably prepared a similar contingency for the Order and the underground, but we’ve allied and dropped off the map. China’s the only place that’s exposed but still poses a threat. With Vipers, they’d depend on using stealth to get the job done. They won’t need excessive manpower. Probably.”

“Probably?” Riley asked.

“Yes,  _ probably.  _ We’re lucky I know this much,” Dante said.

“So what do we  _ do  _ about it?” Jade asked. There was a silence. “I have aided you this far. I hope that in my people’s time of need, you’ll help us.”

“ _ Your  _ people?” Xinguang muttered. Jade kicked him in the shin. “ _ Ow. _ ”

“I’ll do as much as I can to help,” Cobalt said. “But we don’t have enough information to do anything, yet. So before we provide resources or… go to  _ China—  _ holy shit— we need to know what’s happening over there.”

“I haven’t gotten any word from the Archivist,” Mist said. “He collects Basilisks and humans. If this is a Viper thing, he might not have any information. Frankly, it’s a goddamn miracle that Dante knows so much.” Her eyes narrowed slightly at him. “I’m curious as to how he picked so much up.”

“I have a bunch of  _ maybies.  _ We have no idea how accurate any of this is.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Cobalt growled. “I can’t send any of us to die until we know something solid. And to do that, we need a  _ Viper. _ ” Dante could feel Ember stiffen, and he felt a pang go through his chest. If Faith were still alive, it would be a great time to have her.

“Any clue as to where we can get a willing Viper, then?” Martin asked dryly. “Last time I checked, they’re not exactly cooperative.”

Cobalt looked unamused. “We tend to try to avoid them.”

“Well…” Mist said softly, a grimace on her face. Cobalt glared at her. “There are people here who might have some pretty good guesses as to who would be in China.”

“Lilith didn’t tell me shit during my training. I didn’t even know her name until Riley told me, let alone a conspiracy to commit genocide,” Ember said. Cobalt paled. “Unless there’s someone  _ else  _ in this underground who’s a Viper?”

“You have  _ Vipers  _ in your underground?” Martin asked. Garret also looked shocked by this information.

“ _ Former  _ Vipers. Viper, other than Ember. And he’s been out of the program for months. He wouldn’t know anything.”

“He knows how they think.”

“Did you read the kid’s file, or something?”

“Yeah.” Mist gave him a look to say  _ ‘no shit’.  _ “He’s a fully trained Viper, of course I’m going to dredge up his file, and I know that  _ you  _ did too, so no preaching about privacy. I needed to see whether or not he was a threat. If we’re going to assume that this threat in China is Vipers, we need to match it with another Viper. He knows how they think.”

“Who are you two talking about?” Jade asked. Cobalt gave a long groan. “If we need information, I suggest that we take it wherever we can. It’s certainly easier than trying to kidnap a Viper.”

There was a long silence. Dante had a nagging suspicion of who they were talking about, and wondered if it would be a good idea to retreat back into the basement.

“Riley… if either of us know him, he’s going to figure out pretty soon either way. If he had the resources, I wouldn’t put him past trying to bug our room. We might as well. It’s better that we’re the ones to tell him,” Wes said. Cobalt narrowed his eyes. “You know I’m right.”

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“No you’re not.”

Cobalt looked away. “No, I’m not...  _ Fine.  _ But if we’re doing this, St. George is  _ leaving  _ the room. Don’t fight me on this, I’m not having an ex-Viper trainee and a Lieutenant of St. George in the same room. It is  _ asking  _ for a broken alliance.”

“Cobalt—”

“Get out of my bedroom. I know my kid well enough to know that he won’t say shit in front of anyone from the Order. Including you, Garret. Sorry.”

“No, it’s smart,” Garret stood. “We’ll be waiting for an update on the situation at hand.”

“Of course. I assume I’ll find you in the infirmary.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll escort you out.”

Dante watched the soldiers leave the room and looked around the room again. Ember still sat beside him. Mist sat on the other bed, Wes was at the desk, Jade and Xinguang stood near the wall, speaking softly to each other in Mandarin. 

“Do you think it would be a good idea for me to leave?” Dante asked softly. “I won’t exactly be a welcome sight.”

“Yeah, but you also have more information than anyone else that we know of,” Ember said. “Don’t worry. Everyone should be able to keep civil.” Dante let out a soft breath. “What? Do you  _ want  _ to go back to the basement?”

“ _ No.  _ No. I just… I’ve caused enough grief. I’d rather not cause any more.”

Ember looked away and chewed on her lip.

Mist stood from her position. “I don’t think I’ll be necessary for this, so I’m going to make some calls and see if I can’t procure a few favors or dredge up some information. Hopefully by tomorrow, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re up against.”

“Thank you, Mist,” Jade said softly. “And best of luck to you.”

“I hope we can do something to help.” 

With that, Mist left, shutting the door behind her. Dante crossed his legs and rubbed the scar on his shoulder. He could barely feel it, after two months, barely a bump in his skin. Two months was all it took for his wounds to heal. Two months was all it turn his life completely upside down. Make his first real friends.

Lose his friends.

The door opened. Dante stiffened and looked up as Cobalt entered and crossed the room, another hatchling trailing behind him nervously. Dante immediately looked away. He should’ve retreated back to the basement when he had the chance. He didn’t deserve to be here.

The room was stiflingly silent.

“Dante Hill,” Hamsah greeted softly.

Dante gulped. “Hey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Dante. Also Xuan Zhinu.


	3. Dante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still here! This chapter is shorter than usual, but there's really nothing more I can add, so here you go.

Dante hadn’t seen any of his friends in three weeks. They hadn’t come down to deal out revenge, to tell him they hated him, or to forgive him. He had asked after them a few times, but all that Ember would tell him was that they weren’t ready to face him. He tried to be okay with that. He tried to resign himself to their silence. But it had been  _ three weeks. _

Hamsah was leaning against the door, arms crossed and fists clenched, with his eyes firmly downcast. His hair had grown out enough that his snake tattoo was obscured with dark hair, contrasting sharply with the bleached blond beyond his roots. His hands were in cloth wraps, which didn’t quite hide all of the bruises on his fingers. There were dark circles under his eyes.

“I know that you and Dante have a past,” Cobalt said softly. “I’m not asking you to forgive him for what he did, but he has the most recent information about Talon activity, so I need you to put up with his existence for a bit.”

“Sure,” Hamsah shrugged, feigning nonchalance quite badly. “I’m assuming this is about whatever’s going down in China? The thing that you refuse to talk to any of us about in hopes to keep us calm?”

“Hamsah.”

“ _ What?  _ Am I wrong?”

Cobalt gave a soft sigh. “No. You’re not wrong.”

“So why am  _ I  _ here?”

There was a silence. Dante saw Hamsah squirm slightly as Cobalt tried to get his thoughts together. For the first time, Dante wondered exactly how long Hamsah had actually been out of the program, that Astatine still felt the need to protect him and Cobalt was walking around the subject of Vipers like eggshells. Had he known Faith during his training? Would he have trained with Ember, if they had both stayed in Talon?

“We think Talon’s organized a group of Vipers to wipe out the population of China,” Wes was the one to break the silence. He said it gently, gentler than he had  _ ever  _ spoken to Dante, but Hamsah still went rigid. 

“Okay.” he nodded. “So… why am  _ I  _ here?”

“I don’t expect you to know anything about this plan,” Cobalt said. “I know you’ve been out for too long to get any wind of this, and you weren’t exactly high up in the chain. But you might be able to provide some insight to who would be sent and what the average Viper would do.”

Hamsah’s eyes were still fixed on the ground. “I didn’t exactly have a Viper’s mindset. I wouldn’t know…” his voice faded out, and he rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Anything that you can think of,” Jade said. “We don’t have any solid information at the moment. If you can give us  _ anything,  _ it could lead to something more solid.”

Hamsah took a long, deep breath and dragged a hand through his hair, letting a silence stretch throughout the room. Dante half expected him to open the door and walk out. He wouldn’t necessarily blame him.

Hamsah closed his eyes and let his head hit the door behind him. “So who’s all dead?”

“Outcasts, mostly,” Wes responded. “People who no one would miss.”

“That checks out,” Hamsah said. He looked like he was in physical pain.

“And a Shen-Lung on the Elder Council,” Xinguang said softly.

“That… _doesn’t _make sense,” Hamsah’s brow wrinkled as he opened his eyes. “I’d say it was a mistake, but anyone who they sent to do something like what Wes said… assuming that _is _their plan... wouldn’t be the type to make a mistake. Unless she was completely isolated from other dragons.”

“She was on the  _ Elder Council, _ ” Xingugang said, a bit slower than last time.

“Who are you, again?” Hamsah asked. Xinguang straightened, no doubt sensing the irritation in his voice.

“He’s my brother,” Jade interjected, putting a hand on Xinguang’s arm. “Xuan Xinguang. Xinguang, this is Hamsah. He doesn’t mean to insult, he just gets defensive when he’s stressed. The Elder Council is a well-known group. Not isolated.”

“Thank you, Jade. And…” he twitched. “Sorry, Xuan Xinguang. I don’t mean to be rude.”

“Apology accepted.”

“Any Shen-Lung of high importance shouldn’t be dead if there are more targets that wouldn’t be noticed.”

Dante swallowed and bit the inside of his cheek. Hamsah hadn’t looked at him  _ once  _ after their initial greeting. He wasn’t welcome here. The best he could do for their friendship would be to keep quiet and slink back to the basement, because Hamsah wasn’t  _ ready. _

But they had bigger problems to worry about.

“Unless they wanted something from her,” Dante said. Hamsah still didn’t look at him, but he stopped talking. “She’s on the Elder Council, which is... really important. Only the most prominent families are on the Elder Council.Getting information out of someone is a basilisk’s job, but… I’m sure that a Viper could do it in a pinch.” There was a brief silence “The reason that wiping out the entire East Asian population was a last resort was because Talon wanted to have information on old magic. They’ve been working hard on combining it with modern technology, but the European archives of old magic are… lacking, to say the least. If there’s an archive system that your mother would know about, maybe…”

“There isn’t. There never was, either. Our magic is passed down from mother to child through speech. We believe it’s disrespectful to write it down, and it keeps specific magic within a bloodline,” Jade said. 

Xinguang went pale. He grabbed Jade’s arm, eyes wide, and hissed something in Mandarin. Jade’s eyes widened as well, and she let out something that sounded like bastardized draconic for  _ Goddammit. _

“What?” Riley asked.

“Our mother knew the location of our census records. As powerful as Talon is, I doubt that they know  _ every  _ dragon in China. But if they have our census, then they could kill... nearly everyone. There are very few families that don’t send a letter for the census.”

Dante often thought of Jade as a calming presence. She always seemed dignified, like he could come to her for a solution to _ any _ problem, even if the solution was just to admit that there was no way to completely fix something. But in that moment, she looked young, and pale, and scared. Ember’s hand clenched over his, sickness in her expression, and part of Dante knew that it could’ve been her in China, if she hadn’t run away. 

“Stealth will be on the mission,” Hamsah broke the silence. There was nothing on his face. No expression to show what he was thinking. “She knows Mandarin. I’d say that Lilith would be as well, but she’s been taken care of.”

“Stealth?” Cobalt asked.

“Yeah. If I had to guess, I’d say that she’s taken over as chief Viper, or is damn close to it.”

“She’s…”

“Alive? Yeah, you didn’t kill her as well as you...” Hamsah seemed to flinch at his own words, but it was so quick that Dante could almost say it was his imagination. “She’s alive, she’s lethal.”

“Oh, I know she’s still alive and kicking, but she’s also a young adult. There are more skilled Vipers out there,” Cobalt said. “Seraphina could be leading it instead. She’s been training almost as long as Lilith. She knows her stuff.”

Dante wracked his brain for the name Seraphina. He faintly remembered the name being dropped as a candidate to train the second round of vessels, but he couldn’t remember her credentials. But she was a Viper. Enough said.

“I wouldn’t think that Seraphina would know Mandarin. Stealth wasn’t even required to learn it, she just did it because she thought it would come in handy. Which I guess she was right about, now that Talon is… murdering everyone,” Hamsah said. “From what my— my trainer told me about her, I think that Seraphina is a bit too sadistic to lead the mission.”

“ _ Too  _ sadistic to commit genocide?” Wes asked.

“If you play with your target, the mission gets delayed and survivors escape. Lilith enjoyed the chase, but she knew to end it quick. It made her the perfect leader. But since she’s not  _ here... _ ” Hamsah raked a hand through his hair. “If we want to put a stop to what’s happening, we need to get the census and… burn it, or something.”

“We are  _ not  _ burning the census,” Xinguang snapped.

“Well, we need to make it so a bunch of Vipers can’t fucking read it. I feel like step one is making sure they don’t get it in the first place,” Hamsah replied. He swallowed and hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know how many Vipers they’d send. Or how fast they’re working. Where… where is the census?”

“In the Lung Miao,” Jade said, then seemed to realize that no one except for her and Xinguang spoke Mandarin. “It’s where the Elder Council commonly meets, and where the Council met earlier. But even if we have the census, that won’t stop Talon. It will just slow them down.”

“Yeah,” Cobalt agreed. “We’d need to… kill them. Or at least enough of them to deplete their forces. We need to murder a bunch of Talon’s best Vipers.”

There was a stiff silence as everyone seemed to realize exactly what was happening. From the information they had, a group of highly successful assassins were trying to wipe out an entire culture, and they were succeeding. They didn’t know if the Shen-Lungs would recognize the threat. They didn’t know if Stealth or Seraphina or  _ whoever  _ was leading the mission had already gotten hold of the census. And they had no idea what they could do to help if they did.

“Well,” Cobalt rasped. “This is going to be fun.”


	4. Dante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back. I know it's been a while, but this chapter had some unnecessary scenes that I had to cut and is still longer than I would prefer, but I have a feeling that my readers won't complain. So, have this offering.

Dante now had access to two rooms. Which didn’t mean nearly as much as one would think, since stairs were still harder than he’d admit. Really, nothing much changed. Everyone treated him civilly, but Ember and occasionally Mist were the only people who were friendly. Hamsah did his best to pretend that he didn’t exist. Riley and Wes were downright frosty. He was only there to provide information. What they would  _ most likely  _ do. What the Elder Wyrm would  _ most likely  _ try to salvage, and what she would want to eliminate.

Nothing was certain, and he hated it.

Mist didn’t have any information on the Archivist’s end, either, which likely meant that this mission was passed along exclusively by word of mouth. Frankly, it was a miracle that he knew  _ anything. _

“If you hadn’t been so loyal to The Elder Wyrm back when you were in the organization, the Archivist would’ve  _ loved  _ you,” Mist said at one point, smirking. “He really should consider getting some Chameleons on board.”

The plan formed over three days of intense planning: They needed the census reports first— that would slow the Vipers down. Of course, that would be hard enough, since Jade was no longer in the council. Xinguang was firmly against stealing them. So talking to the Elder Council was the only way to go.

Gaining the census would keep the Vipers from increasing their kill rate, but it wouldn’t stop them. They’d have to track down and kill enough of them to render the mission impossible to complete. They didn’t know how they’d accomplish that— they didn’t know how many Vipers they were. But they  _ did  _ know that they’d be the best of the best. 

If they couldn’t successfully kill the Vipers, the goal was to convince as many Shen-Lungs as possible to leave China. An awful solution that both Jade and Xinguang hated, but it was better that the population live in a diaspora than go extinct and lose everything they stood for. Riley could arrange safehouses in America, if they needed to.

But hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.

Either way, to defeat a small, elite force, it was best to create a small, elite force to match. Jade and Xinguang were obviously coming. Cobalt was, as well— they needed as much information as they could get, and basilisks were trained to procure such information from an unwilling target. Ember was coming, as was Hamsah— Vipers to match Vipers. Jade requested that Garret come as a show of good will from the Order, but no one else from the Order was allowed; both Martin and Ward would be staying at a farmhouse. Wes was staying. He’d help as much as he could from the other side of the world, but he knew he’d be more useful keeping the Underground organized.

And Dante was coming to China, as well. In Jade’s words, if they wanted to convince the Elder Council to trust any Westerners, it would be easiest to have a Chameleon on their side.

Dante didn’t know what to think of that.

The morning that they left was dry and freezing. Dante could see his breath in the air, and the ground was frozen beneath his feet. It was nice to be outside after weeks underground, but he decided that he preferred the desert weather.

“Drive to this location,” Mist told Cobalt, pressing a paper into his hand. “There’ll be a human security guard, tell him that Yehoshua sends her regards and wishes for blue skies. He’ll lead you to the plane that the Archivist gave us. It’s fully stocked with what you need.”

“This seems incredibly shady.”

“My employer may be fickle, but he collects  _ knowledge _ . Destroying yet another culture isn’t something that he stands for,” Mist said. “He didn’t have the means to work against the Elder Wyrm during the conquest Feathered Serpents and the Nagas. Now he has us. Just… take the private jet.”

“Okay, okay. I trust you. Mostly,” Cobalt said. “You can still come, you know. I wouldn’t blame you for bailing from your current situation.”

“Stuck between a pressurized metal tube hurtling through the sky and working with St. Anthony to keep the peace, I will  _ never  _ board the tube. Good luck, though,” Mist smirked and turned away to say her goodbyes to Jade and Ember. 

Dante’s eyes wandered past that scene to the group near the porch. Hamsah, Astatine, and Kain were talking to each other, even as Astatine shielded her eyes from the weak sun and Kain shivered. Dante looked away as they continued to talk. He wanted to go over to them. He wanted to say his goodbyes, in case he didn’t return. But it wasn’t his friendship to claim.

“And you’re sure that you can hold down the fort here?” Cobalt was still talking, this time to Wes, who looked annoyingly at ease in the cold. He wasn’t even wearing a jacket.

“Mate, we all have our roles to play. You’re going to China and taking care of the Viper problems. I can stay here and make sure everything goes smoothly. And don’t give me the  _ ‘you hate teenagers’  _ speech. I’m well aware. But they’re my kids, too.”

Dante could see Cobalt visibly relax. “What would I do without you?”

“You’d be dead a thousand times over.”

“Smartass.”

“Hey.” Mist was beside him, arms crossed, looking him over with a piercing stare that bordered on concern. “Don’t die, okay?”

“I’ll try not to.”

“That’s all I need to hear.” Mist smirked. “Good luck, then, Mr. Hill.”

That managed to draw a weak laugh out of him. As if they were both still in Talon, playing games of power and trust. “I think we’re long past using formal titles,  _ Miss Anderson _ . Good luck on playing liaison. You and Tristan really have your work cut out.”

“Eh, he can still talk, I know how to write things down when he can’t understand me, we’ll be fine. It’s better than letting Martin and Wes try to reach agreements,” Mist shrugged. Dante winced. “Neither of them are exactly  _ people  _ persons.”

“And you are?” Dante asked.

“Well, maybe not as much as you, but I  _ do  _ trust Tristan not to screw us over and vice versa, so we have that going for us,” she said. She raised her voice as she continued, “But you all need to leave if you’re planning on taking advantages of the Archivist’s generosity. He’s one for punctuality.”

Cobalt nodded and started ushering everyone towards the SUV they had procured. He and Garret sat in the front, Dante and Ember were in the middle, and Hamsah, Jade, and Xinguang were crammed in the back. Dante shivered, even as Cobalt turned the heating on. Last time he left the farmhouse, it was to bomb the labs. He was bored out of his mind in the basement, but the farmhouse felt safe to him. Much safer than where they were going.

“So there’s one Viper travelling up the Pearl River,” Hamsah muttered. Dante heard Ember give a low groan— Hamsah had spent the last twenty-four hours pouring over a map of China and marking down where every known death had taken place in an attempt to figure out the number of Vipers they were going up against. Apparently, Ember was losing patience.

“We’ve gathered,” Xinguang said.

“And you say that we don’t need to worry about Taiwan?”

“Those dragons are natives to the island. A smaller force than ours, likely too small for Talon to take seriously.”

“So we ignore them, great. And Japan?”

“We ignore them, too.”

“Korea?”

“Ever since the Civil War, most dragons from that area fled to China.”

“Mongolia?”

“Tibet takes priority over Mongol—  _ Ow! _ ” Jade hissed.

“There are only dragons in Southern Mongolia,” Xinguang answered. “They have correspondence to the Chinese Council.”

“Are there any dragons West of China?”

“Central Asia is Talon’s territory, these days,” Xinguang said. “Do… do you not know that?”

“In bits and pieces. I guess that we can’t evacuate that direction, though.”

“Seriously?  _ You’re  _ Central As _ — _ ”

“Just because I have mixed blood doesn’t mean that I know anything about Central Asia,” Hamsah muttered. It must’ve been a sore spot for him, because he didn’t try to start up another conversation.

The rest of the car ride passed relatively quietly. Garret and Riley spoke back and forth from time to time, as did Jade and Xinguang. Dante kept to himself. It ached somewhere deep in his chest, being so close to Hamsah when Hamsah barely acknowledged his existence. They hadn’t spoken about what happened. Dante hadn’t even gotten to apologize.

He had never been good with apologies. 

The airport was smaller than anything Dante had seen, and that was saying something for someone who had regularly been shuffled around the United states via private planes. But this place didn’t have any signs. Just a Gila security guard and a tarmac. The plane that they boarded was also small for their group, but not too uncomfortable. It had food, at least.

“Okay, so we’re making a stop in California and Hawai’i for refueling purposes. We’re going to be spending thirty-six hours straight together. Try not to have any fights. Maybe sort out your differences, if you’re feeling ambitious,” Riley said as he sat down. There was a long silence as the plane started moving and eventually lifted off the ground, where Dante could only stare at the floor and twist his fingers in his lap. 

He wanted to look at Hamsah. See if he could find a reaction.  _ Anything. _

“Garret Sebastian.” Hamsah broke the silence. He was looking right at Garret.. “I’m sorry for trying to attack you when we first came to the farmhouse. I knew that you were a soldier, obviously, but… I also knew that you killed Faith. I know that she deserved it, too, but she was the only other Viper trainee around when I was in the program. Knowing that you’re responsible for her death hurt more than I expected it to, and I reacted… immaturely.” He swallowed and scratched the back of his neck. He looked paler than usual. “There we go. Differences, settled.”

“Oh. I had honestly... forgotten about that. It’s been a hectic few months. Thanks?” Garret said, glancing at Cobalt. Cobalt only shrugged; apparently he hadn’t actually expected differences to be settled. “I didn’t know you knew Faith.”

“I only knew her for a few months. We lived at the same training compound, and our trainers would sometimes have us practice together. She was…” Hamsah bit his lip. “She was nice, when she first came. I got to see some of that. And then she turned ruthless, and I  _ didn’t,  _ and I left Talon, and she didn’t, and then she died, and… I mean, it’s not like we were  _ friends,  _ but… it hurt. I actually didn’t realize that I’d miss her until she was gone.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Garret responded. There was no hesitancy in his voice, nothing to convey that his words were a lie to make Hamsah feel better. He was genuinely  _ sorry—  _ not for killing Faith, but because of the pain it put on Hamsah. It made apologies seem so easy.

Dante took a breath. “Hamsah—”

“Don’t.” 

Dante shut his mouth. Hamsah hadn’t even  _ looked  _ at him.

It was going to be a long plane ride.

***

It wasn’t the  _ worst  _ thirty-six hours of his life— the time since Crescent Beach was full of horrible experiences— but it was certainly up there. Thirty-six hours in a tin can, hurling through the atmosphere with nothing to do but keep trying to form a plan. Most of the plan consisted of Hamsah and Ember trying to convince Xinguang to let Riley steal the census rather than ask for it. Xinguang looked like he regretted going to them for help. 

Dante was _desperately_ trying not to be jealous about the fact that Ember and Hamsah got along well.

Still, being in the plane felt safer than where he was now— a small village nestled in between farmlands, walking along a road that would take them up a mountain to the seat of the Elder Council. The same form that let him blend in among upper class Americans left him completely exposed in rural China. 

“Is that a tattoo place?” Hamsah asked.

“Before you ask, the answer’s no,” Cobalt said. “You have a problem.” There was a pause. “ _ Is  _ it a tattoo place?”

“Unfortunately,” Jade gave a sigh that was slightly more dramatic than necessary. “You Westerners are having an impact on us.”

Xinguang muttered something in Chinese, and Jade rolled her eyes and flicked the side of his head.

“I don’t understand the reason behind the tattoo ban,” Hamsah muttered. 

“They make you easy to identify. They cost money that we don’t want to spend. You’re only eighteen.”

“Fight me. You have one, too.”

“I have  _ one. _ ”

“I want something on my hands.”

“On your— you’re insane. And the answer’s still no.”

Dante tried to tune out that conversation and focused on the road ahead, clutching the cane in his hand. He didn’t like using it— it was bad enough that he was wearing a back brace  _ again—  _ but he couldn’t deny that letting some of his weight go to his shoulder helped keep him upright for longer. 

He wasn’t sure if  _ longer  _ would get him up the mountain in one go.

_ Well, at least the weather’s nice. _

“What are you thinking about?” Ember asked, slowing down her pace to match his.

Dante shrugged. “A few things.”

“Like?”

“Mostly trying to maneuver the walking stick so it can be helpful and worrying about how I’m going to walk uphill for four miles,” he responded. Ember winced. “Also wondering what tattoo Hamsah wants to add to his collection.”

“He does have a lot of them, doesn’t he?”

“It’s very impressive,” Dante nodded. He put his free hand on Ember’s shoulder and managed to walk a bit faster. The village grew sparse as the road narrowed and turned to gravel, then to dirt. Cobalt muttered something behind them that sounded vaguely unhappy, but kept his pace steady as the road inclined. Jade and Xinguang were still speaking to one another as they lead the way up the mountain. Dante focused on the ground beneath him, keeping up with the group, and trying not to put too much of his weight on Ember. It wasn’t long before they fell to the back of the line with his limp, and by twenty minutes of uphill travel, he was trembling from the exertion. They hadn’t gotten halfway up before Jade glanced back and called a halt. He and Ember closed the distance between them and the rest of the group before he sat down on the ground. Then layed down. At least the ground supported his weight.

_ So I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow. Good to know. _

“So we all know what the plan is?” Cobalt asked. Ember sighed and sat down beside him. 

“Jade and Xinguang introduce us, you explain exactly who were are, what we do, and what Talon is doing,” Ember said with a completely monotone voice. “You and Dante convince them that we’re different than the  _ other  _ Europeans they’ve come into contact with, that we’re trustworthy individuals, and that we can work together with minimal conflicts.”

“Then you and the resident Chameleon try to convince them to either give us the census or move it to a different location. If they refuse, we  _ don’t  _ steal it, we simply ask for the locations of dragons on the Pearl River in order to find a Viper and prove our worth,” Hamsah recited. “Through this, Garret Sebastian and I don’t talk unless they ask why we’re here, in which case we do not lie, but we don’t mention our longstanding alliance with the Order until we have properly secured their trust.”

“Wow, guys, way to sound enthusiastic about this,” Cobalt said dryly.

“We’re incredibly enthusiastic. I just  _ also  _ know that this is where your anxiety kicks in and you start going over every aspect of this meeting and how it can go wrong. That part? Not super enthusiastic about,” Ember shrugged.

“Why am I not allowed to talk but Ember Hill is?” Hamsah asked.

“Because I have a habit of convincing people to do things that they don’t want to do, according to Riley. Apparently, it’s a trait that Dante and I share.”

“On the off chance that they know Dante’s history with Talon more in depth than—”

“I didn’t give them specifics,” Jade interrupted. “Only that he used to be a somewhat important diplomat.”

“Do you always do this before a meeting?” Xinguang asked.

“Yes,” Ember and Garret responded. Cobalt gave an eye-roll, but he didn’t try to defend himself.

“This would be easier if I were still part of the council,” Jade muttered.

“I thought you said that you didn’t care,” Xinguang snapped.

“I  _ don’t, _ ” Jade snapped back. “That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be  _ helpful. _ ”

“What would be helpful is if Lan were still here. She was good at these things,” Xinguang muttered. Jade winced. Dante wondered who Lan was to them. “But… she’s not. And the Elder Council respects you for your knowledge and intuition, even if they disapprove of the way you got it. They’ll listen to us. We’ll make them.”

Jade furrowed her brow. “That’s… the nicest thing you’ve said to me in half a century.” She smirked slightly. “Are you going to stop calling me the family disappointment, now?”

“You  _ are  _ the family disappointment.”

Jade rolled her eyes. Dante couldn’t help but smile at their antics. It was nice, really, having another set of siblings around.

“Can we keep going?” Jade asked after a few more minutes. Dante struggled to his feet and nodded. “Good. Two more miles.”

“Great. I can do that,” Dante muttered. He wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not.

The journey took longer than they wanted, but they only had to take two more breaks. He wasn’t the only one who was struggling to walk four miles uphill, but everything from his ribs down was starting to take on a burning-numb feeling that made it nearly impossible to keep himself upright. By the time they reached the temple, the sky was starting to show oranges and pinks on the horizon.

And what a temple it was.

Dante hadn’t taken much time to imagine what it could be like— he had seen a few Bhuddist temples in history books and imagined something vaguely like it. But this temple was  _ huge.  _ It had at least three floors to it and separate wings sprawling in different directions. The walls were made of limestone, and the roofs looked to be plated with gold. There were intricate carvings on the walls and floor, the most prominent being two dragons— shen-lungs— with rubies for eyes. There was a garden around it as well, and even though it wasn’t in bloom during the winter, it was a sight to behold.

“Pick your jaws off the ground. What did you expect? We’re still  _ dragons. _ ” Jade’s voice interrupted their staring. 

“Yeah…” Cobalt said slowly. Then he pinched himself and shook out his hands. “Yeah. Right. Sorry. I just wasn’t expecting this. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a fancy building without B and E. Can you walk us through formalities again?”

Jade gave him a slightly condescending look, but she complied with the request. Dante would be lying if he said that he wasn’t intimidated, as well. He had read stories of the old days, when dragons lived in extensive cave systems with hoards of shiny metals and carvings made of bone, and others of the middle ages, when certain dragons were able to infiltrate the nobility and live in castles. This building seemed to be of that kind of stock. It looked like any of them could decrease the value of the property by stepping on the floor.

“Ember. Dante,” Jade said. “You’re better than this.”

“I’m… not,” Ember whispered.

“I’m disappointed in all of you. Come on.” Jade beckoned and ascended the stairs with Xinguang, everyone trailing behind her. Ember let Dante put a hand on her shoulder as he struggled with the steps. He was  _ not  _ liking the steps after that climb.

“So I guess this is where your Chinese tea ceremony comes in handy,” Ember tried to quip as they entered the incredibly rich temple. The walls were still made out of white stone. It was old enough for parts of the stone to crack, but it looked like those cracks were sealed with solid gold and silver.

“Most unfortunately, you—  _ ow—  _ ran away and I was promoted before we could reach that unit.  _ God,  _ ow… the cane is no longer helping.”

Jade approached a pair of ornate doors, brushed her hair back, and turned around to face them. 

“Remember, Xinguang will speak to them, then I will introduce you, and  _ then  _ you speak. All of the Elders are over six hundred. Try not to panic,” Jade said. Dante watched Ember’s face grow pale, and couldn’t help but feel the same way.

Xinguang rapped on the door. For a long moment, there was silence. It was just them, holding their breath, feeling desperately out of place. Then a voice inside said something that Dante couldn’t understand, and Xinguang pushed open the doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da... only took FOUR CHAPTERS, but they're in China, now.


	5. Dante

Dante had spoken to two Wyrms over the past six months. Once in Vegas, then several times with the Elder Wyrm. He had also spent three weeks being at the mercy of the underground while regarding them as enemies. He liked to think that he had become accustomed to being around more powerful dragons than he, and he no longer felt fear at the prospect.

He was wrong.

There were  _ five _ of them. All of them were staring at their group. All of them could kill him without breaking a sweat. Dante watched as Xinguang and Jade both bowed to them briefly and Xinguang exchanged some words in Mandarin to an old woman, probably close to the age of wyrm, if not there already. Talon taught him that there were only three wyrms in existence, but standing in this room, he had a nagging feeling that it was propaganda.

Cobalt made eye contact with him and jerked his head, signalling that Dante stand next to him. Because, despite Dante’s status within the underground, he still had the most information about the subject at hand. He limped to Cobalt’s side, clenching his teeth to stop any sounds of pain. He was in front of five adult Shen-Lungs. He wasn’t going to act like he was in pain just because his back was giving him trouble.

Xinguang was still talking. Then the woman  _ cut him off. _

Dante was impressed that he didn’t collapse on the spot.

“We do have visitors, Xuan Xinguang,” she said calmly. “I feel it inappropriate to speak in a language they do not comprehend.” She regarded all of them slowly, stood from her chair, and walked down the steps. On even ground, she was shorter than Dante. He still wanted to hide.

Dante took a deep breath, allowed one more second to be terrified, and pushed his emotions to the side. He had spoken with wyrms before. He could do it again.

“Xuan Yuu,” she said, approaching Jade.

“Wanyan Nu shi,” Jade bowed lowly, her form showing nothing but respect.

“None of that, Yuu,” she said. “You should not have had to hear of Zhinu’s death the way you did. We couldn’t contact you to tell you of her passing, and for that, I am sorry.”

“I… thank you,” Jade whispered.

“Your mother was a great woman, and she loved both of you. Even when she was exasperated by your… antics,” Ms. Wanyan continued. Jade looked at the ground, wringing her hands. “I trust that Xinguang has told you of your status with the General Council?”

“Yes. He has.”

“Your loyalties are divided. They always have been, but now more than ever. We do not trust these Europeans you have brought to us. But… your judgment of character has brought you fortune before. We will hear whatever you have to say.” she paused. “I feel it necessary to repeat, I  _ do not  _ trust Europeans.”

“I understand,” Jade nodded.

“I want to talk with both of you—” she looked at Xinguang as she said that, which made him stiffen up— “after this is over. Until then…” she turned her gaze to Cobalt and Dante. Dante took a careful breath. He noticed that Cobalt stopped breathing beside him.

“Xinguang has told me your names, Lan-se and Diyu. Nanren, Mao, Hamsah. Welcome to the Lung Miao.” Her voice was cold compared to how she spoke to Jade, taking the warmth out of the air. Dante remembered his basic training, that calling anyone by their first name while they only knew your surname was a show of authority. Dante had no doubts about who it belonged to. “I am Wanyan Lianhua. You will come under no harm in this temple, provided you don’t do anything… stupid.” She said it with a smile. Dante didn’t trust it for a second.

“It’s an honor to be here,” Cobalt said, his voice impressively calm, considering his body language beside Dante screamed  _ ‘rubber band about to break’.  _ Five Shen-Lungs stared at them, looking everything from vaguely unimpressed to suspicious. Dante could count seven empty seats around them. “I understand you don’t have a good record with Europeans. It’s understandable that you don’t trust us. However, I can say with reasonable certainty that I understand Talon better than you could. I grew up in it. Xinguang informed us of the recent deaths that occured, and we believe it to be related to Talon. If you would trust us, we want to lend aid.”

She stared at Cobalt, head cocked to the side slightly.

“And why is that? What can you gain from this?”

“We owe... Xuan Yuu for her aid,” Cobalt replied. “And Talon has killed enough cultures. If we can help prevent adding another to the list, we will.”

“We have dealt with Europeans often over the past centuries,” another Shen-Lung spoke up without rising from his seat. He stared at Cobalt with unrelenting golden eyes. “They always want something in return for what aid they give. Many of us have learned that the hard way. We do not trade favors, Lan-se.”

There was a stiff silence. The room was cold in a way that reminded him distinctly of board rooms. Dante, even in his height as a Chameleon, hated board rooms.

“You have a right to be wary of us,” Dante said calmly. He didn’t smile, the way his trainer taught him to. He didn’t fidget like he used to. He gripped his cane, ignored the cold, and spoke. “We were raised in Talon. Many of us have committed atrocities for them, in the past, and whether we like it or not, we are influenced by that upbringing. But we…” Dante paused. “Lan-se is not like them in the sense that your fear. He has been out of Talon and fighting against it for twelve years, and has paid the price for that several times over.  _ All _ of us—” he motioned to their group— “have lost things to Talon. Friends. Family. Parts of our identity that Talon deemed  _ inconvenient _ . We approach you not because we want something from you down the line, but because we don’t want that to happen to anyone else, and because Talon won’t stop coming after a target until the target is dead or it’s shown itself as too powerful to wipe out without taking unacceptable losses.”

“We would not have challenged Talon’s power in the West,” the man snapped. “We want nothing to do with your war.”

“I know. We would all be happier if you didn’t have to become involved, because you didn’t do anything to deserve it. But Talon has decided that you  _ will  _ be. This war has come to you whether you want it to or not. It’s your choice to accept or reject aid or allies as you see fit. I know that overcoming mistrust is… difficult,” he said. “It is for everyone. But at the very least, let us share information. We have all spent time in Talon. Between us, we might know what’s happening to your people.”

There was a tense silence, where five Shen-lungs who could easily kill all of them shared looks that only they could understand. Dante looked over all of them individually. The talkative male seemed to be the youngest, and stared at them with an air of distrust born experience and prejudice. Wanyan Lianhua stood regally, obviously confident in her element. Considering her interaction with Jade, he could guess that she was protective of her people, but not unreasonable. The second oldest person he could identify— a man with stark white hair and golden robes— glared at Dante with a venom that made him think that he was in the presence of someone who had spoken to the Elder Wyrm herself and hadn’t enjoyed the conversation. He couldn’t get a read on the other two members of the Elder Council.

Finally, Lianhua turned back to him.

“What can your group tell us of Talon’s activities?”

Dante let out a small breath and allowed himself half a second to revel in his small victory.

“I left Talon two months ago. During my time there, I gained an ability to find information that I wasn’t supposed to have.”

It was almost easy, at that point, to speak. He kept his voice calm, allowing Riley, Xinguang, or Jade to interject or expand upon his words. It was nearly calming to be back in an environment such as this, balancing between tact and accuracy. He told them that Talon could no longer use Vessels in their full force because of the laboratory bombings, then of the backup plan that he had heard whispers of. He and Ember explained the skill set of Vipers, how old they would likely be, and their likely targets. The council listened, occasionally talking among themselves in Mandarin, but hadn’t told him to be quiet or to leave. Finally, Dante drew to a close, explaining that they believed Stealth was leading the mission. Xinguang was the one to explain the suspected reason for his mother’s death. He was calm as he said it, but he wasn’t quite good enough at concealing his emotions to fool Dante into thinking that he wasn’t grieving.

“If Talon gets ahold of your census, there’s not much that we can do to aid you,” Cobalt said, saving Xinguang from continuing. “I… knew Stealth, when I was younger, and I can promise that she’s efficient. The only thing that’s holding her back from going through with outright genocide is that she doesn’t have all of the information that she needs.”

“You put much trust in this dragon’s skills,” One of the women said, her stare piercing. It made Cobalt twitch slightly, as if he had been shocked. “I don’t think you put enough in Xuan Zhinu’s. She would not easily give up the location of this temple, nor where we keep this temple.”

“Talon has gotten  _ incredibly  _ adept at procuring difficult information,” Cobalt responded. “I don’t want to disrespect a council member.” He paused, seeming to consider his words. “And anyone who raised Xuan Yuu obviously has a strong will. But I can say that Stealth wouldn’t have let her die until she got what she wanted, or until Madame Xuan escaped. I… do not see her here.”

_ “Lan-se, _ ” Jade snapped. “It’s still a bit sensitive.”

“Sorry.” Cobalt winced. “But my point stands. If Stealth knows where the census is— and I’m assuming that she does by now— you’re on borrowed time until it’s moved to a different location.”

Dante  _ could not  _ blame Cobalt for his tone and word choice. He was a Basilisk. He didn’t have any training in diplomacy. It wasn’t his fault.

One of the Sehn-Lungs narrowed her eyes at Cobalt, leaning forward in her seat. Cobalt was good at hiding his nerves, but Dante didn’t miss how his fingers twitched towards the gun tucked into his waistband.

“You ask for a lot of faith, Lan-se, considering your own history with Talon. What reason should we trust you? What reason do we have to believe that you haven’t struck a deal with Talon to give us false information in return for your safety?”

“There isn’t a chance in hell that Talon would offer me  _ safety, _ ” Cobalt said.

“Then what, pray tell, do you hope to gain by giving us aid?”

Dante saw something akin to frustration flash across Cobalt’s face. “There used to be many more species of dragons out there, as I’m sure you know, before Talon expanded its reach to the corners of the world. I’d hate for the same thing that happened to them happen to you.” He broke eye contact. Took a breath. Unclenched his fists. “I apologize for my bluntness, and for my defensive attitude. I don’t mean to be… rude.” He swallowed. He obviously wasn’t used to this situation. “I grew up in a part of the world that used to be home to Feathered Serpents. Now, the only ones that survive are the ones inside of Talon, who know nothing of the culture that they were meant to uphold. I know that our species have our differences, but if I can do anything to stop something similar from happening, then I’ll do it. Talon has killed enough people as it is.”

There was a long silence. Dante took a deep breath and looked everyone over— the youngest one obviously didn’t like them. The older man didn’t trust a word that came out of Dante’s mouth, but he was looking at Cobalt curiously. One of the women whose name Dante hadn’t heard looked more open than she had been previously. Ms. Wanyan was emotionless.

It would’ve been about two months since Talon sent their  _ join us or die  _ offer, and now more Europeans were showing up, asking them for something that could expose their entire civilization. They only knew their group from Jade, who had recently been kicked out of the general council. They wouldn’t be able to  _ talk  _ the Elder Council into trusting them.

Dante ground his teeth and took a step forward. “If I may?”

“Speak.”

“I do understand your hesitation. This census is important to you in a way that we can’t fully comprehend, and we ask for a lot of trust when we ask you to take our words as truth. Being truthful… we don’t even know how much of what we speculate is correct. However, there is a way to give us solid evidence; we have reason to believe that there’s a Viper travelling up the Pearl River. If you can give us someone’s location there, we may be able to lure a Viper to us. We can get confirmation from them, and if Yuu or Xinguang travel with us, they will be able to vouch that we aren’t twisting our story to suit any intentions you may fear that we have,” he said levelly. “Would that be satisfactory to prove our intentions?”

All eyes were on him. Dante was starting to find that he hated that feeling. He hated it even more when Wanyan Lianhua, who he was more and more certain  _ was,  _ in fact, a wyrm, walked toward him until they were standing less than a foot apart. Her eyes were straight black, not another color in them.

“Two months ago, one of Talon’s  _ spokespeople _ told us to join them or die. A man named  _ Smith, _ ” she said. Dante felt part of him lock up. His trainer. His  _ trainer  _ had been where he stood. “You know him, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”

“Yes.” Somehow, his voice didn’t shake when he responded.

“Xuan Yuu thought that it would be you to deliver that…  _ generous  _ offer. And now, you ask for our trust.”

Dante swallowed, fighting the urge to take a step back. “I have paid for my previous alliances, and am doing everything I possibly can to make amends. That being said, I don’t ask you to trust  _ me. _ I ask you to trust Cobalt and his people. He’s been actively fighting Talon for the past decade, and he’s…” Dante looked at Cobalt, who was staring at him, head cocked to the side. He turned back to Ms. Wanyan.

“When I was still in Talon, I hated him, because he had taken everything that Talon had taught him and used it to help people that Talon would prefer to eliminate. He may not be  _ nice,  _ but he genuinely wants to help anyone who’s willing to accept it, and occasionally those who have no idea that they need it. The only reason I’m acting as a spokesperson is because I spent time close to the executives of Talon, and there have the most reliable information.” He looked her in the eyes, calm and unchallenging, but unrelenting. “He is here to help you. That’s the full truth.”

The Shen Lung narrowed her eyes. Dante wanted to melt into the ground.

“We will discuss this offer with Yuu and Xinguang,” she said levelly. Dante nearly collapsed in relief as she strode back to her chair and sat down. “Until then, down the left hall there are rooms that you may use for the night.”

Dante barely remembered a  _ thank you  _ before he was retreating out of the room. Ember joined him at his side as the doors shut behind them, guiding him by the arm not using the cane. He wasn’t going to be able to move the next day. That was a definite truth. It was taking all of his willpower to keep moving instead of collapsing on the spot. 

Thankfully, the rooms were close. A human monk lead them down the hallway and gestured to three empty rooms. Riley thanked him in stilted Mandarin— apparently he  _ could  _ be polite— and ushered them all into one room. Two beds each. Dante claimed one wordlessly. 

Yeah. He wasn’t moving for the foreseeable future.

“So, I guess that this is Dante and Ember’s room,” Riley said. He sat down on the other bed and took a breath. “That was…”

“ _ Horrible, _ ” Ember finished. “And I wasn’t even the one talking most of the time.”

“I wonder what Jade and Xinguang are talking about in there,” Garret muttered. He looked twitchy enough to jump out of skin. 

“Family stuff,” Dante responded without thinking. Garret looked at him questioningly. “It’s… kinda obvious. Their mother was on the Elder Council, so all of the members in there probably knew both of them when they were growing up. And now their mom’s  _ dead. _ They need to work through the personal stuff just as much as they need to address what we had to say.”

“Can all Chameleons just… know things like that?” Garret asked.

“Former Chameleon.”

“Infierno,” Cobalt said. Dante stiffened. “You…” He looked away, working a muscle in his jaw for a few moments. Dante felt himself holding his breath. “You came through in there. I… wouldn’t have been able to do that by myself. I’m impressed. Reluctantly.”

“Oh,” Dante managed. He wasn’t expecting that, and had  _ no  _ idea how to respond to it.

Truthfully, he hadn’t liked being back in his element. It made him feel fake and dirty, even though he hadn’t lied. He had fallen into that role so easily, even after two months of trying to leave his training behind him. True, they had  _ needed  _ it, but…

He didn’t like who he was, when he was in that environment.

“However,” Cobalt continued, oblivious to Dante’s thoughts, “considering that you cannot shift or walk properly, I think it’ll be best that you stay here while we go to the Pearl River.”

“Logical. Should I... keep talking to the Elder Council? I  _ know  _ that you want a long-term alliance, no matter what you say.”

“Don’t push it. If they think they’re being manipulated, our mission is fucked, which means  _ they’re  _ fucked, and they might eat you, and we don’t want ourselves to be down a diplomat right now… wow, we’re actually doing this,” Cobalt said. He let out a breath. “We’re in  _ China.  _ Trying to kill a bunch of Vipers. Who are all older than me. This is insane. Speaking of which. Hamsah. Garret. We’re  _ subduing _ our first Viper. Remember that.” 

“Cool,” Hamsah nodded.

Dante looked away. He already knew that Hamsah was uncomfortable with killing. He didn’t know if he had actually killed anyone in his training. This wasn’t going to be an easy mission. But Dante trusted Cobalt— a strange feeling to have— too pull it off. He had heard about plenty of the ridiculous stunts he had done over the years. This couldn’t be too much harder. It wasn’t like they were trying to kill all of the Vipers at once.

“So… this is Ember and Dante’s room. Jade and Xinguang are getting one of the rooms, no doubt. St. George, are you okay with doubling up with Hamsah and I? I’m plenty used to sharing beds.”

“Is  _ Wes _ okay with—”

“Shut up.”

Garret smirked, and Cobalt crossed his arms.

The door opened.

“They’ve accepted your proposal,” Jade didn’t even wait for a greeting. She looked frayed. Both she and Xinguang did, really. “Apparently, I still have  _ some  _ credibility with the Elder Council.” She look a breath and closed her eyes. “There’s an isolated house near the riverbank. A Shen-Lung lives there. She doesn’t keep in contact with her family or anyone in the council, unless they send her a letter first. If it weren’t for the fact that she replied to the census call, no one would know she existed.  _ But  _ apparently, her family name is known in the town near to her.”

Cobalt nodded. “Isolated. No one would miss her if she were gone. But she has enough of a presence in the world that Talon could get wind of her existence. How long of a journey is it?”

“Six hours by plane,” Jade said. 

Cobalt winced, but didn’t complain. He just nodded.

“Okay. First thing tomorrow. We’re going to capture a Viper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters are getting... much longer than they used to be. I can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing.


	6. Ember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I have not updated in a while. I am not dead. Mental health has not been super great for the past few weeks, so editing was hard and my writing seemed worse than it actually was. But I'm back, now, and though updates might be slow, they will keep coming. Thank you for your patience with me; I appreciate it a lot.

They left before dawn, when Dante was still unconscious. Jade had already made arrangements for him and Xinguang to stay at the temple until they returned, but it still took some work for Ember to resign herself to leaving him in the trust of strangers. He wasn’t going to be able to move for at least a day, and she didn’t like the thought of leaving him in that situation. 

Jade said that trust between the Elder Council and the underground had to be forged both ways. Riley tried to reassure her by saying that Dante had plenty of experience with not moving. Neither were particularly helpful.

Eventually, they made their way down the mountain— an easier feat than going up, but still a pain in the ass— and to their plane, still in one piece and fully stocked. Ember had to admit that having a private plane at their disposal made their life infinitely easier, even if she wasn’t a fan of planes. The pilot was silent as ever as they boarded, but lifted off the moment Jade told him where they were going.

“The Geung family has never been involved with the council, and I doubt that they were deemed enough of a threat to be involved with the Night of Fang and Fire. This means that this Geung Chensha will not be aware of what has happened, unless someone is sending her letters,” Jade said. “I don’t know if she speaks English, either. I’ll explain the situation to the best of my ability and translate for you when needed.”

“Okay. From there, she needs to stay in her home as much as possible, and  _ we  _ need to make it look like we aren’t there,” Riley said. “No going into the town. No leaving the house. Try not to get too close to the window, if possible.”

“This is gonna suck,” Hamsah muttered. He looked vaguely sick. He wouldn’t stop fidgeting, either. 

Ember desperately hoped that this wasn’t his first mission. All of the training in the world couldn’t truly prepare someone for what was really about to happen. They couldn’t have any weak points in their group.

_ Riley decided to take him,  _ she reminded herself.  _ Riley knows more about him than I do, and he thinks it’s a good idea. Hamsah’s older than me, anyway. He definitely got more training. _

“Do we know how long it’ll take before the Viper shows up?” Garret asked.

“Nope.”

“Do we know the approximate age of the Viper?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, this is gonna suck.” 

Riley gave an eye-roll, but didn’t disagree with them. He just went back to assembling their supply bag. Ember saw his nose wrinkle in disgust when he unearthed two clear cases, each of which had a supply of loaded syringes. He stuffed them in the duffel bag without any further fanfare. 

In all seriousness, it  _ was  _ going to suck. This Viper was outnumbered, sure, but it was still an elite Viper. This was dangerous. It was very possible that one of them could die if they didn’t subdue it quickly. Wherever Gueng Chensha lived had a good possibility of being destroyed.

Assuming she let them  _ help  _ her.

They finally escaped the plane in the mid-afternoon to find themselves in the middle of a grassy plainland. It took two miles of walking before they found a dirt road, and another mile before they saw a lonely house by the river. It wasn’t a modern building by any means, but it looked like a house rather than a temple. A large house made out of rough stone, but still a house. Ember could see a motorcycle parked nearby. Who knew that a Shen-Lung would know how to drive one of those. It was still on Ember’s list of things to learn.

She, Riley, Garret, and Hamsah stood back as Jade approached the door. She knocked twice and said something in what Ember assumed was Mandarin. There was silence, and she repeated herself.

“What’s she saying?” Riley asked.

“I’m Xuan Yuu with something from the something something that I assume is the Elder Council. I’m with something something something, I something something talk about something something, yeah, I’m lost,” Hamsah replied. Riley raised an eyebrow. “What? I said that I was taught Mandarin, I didn’t say I was any good at it. How much of that did  _ you  _ understand?”

“It’s comforting to know I’m not the only person who sucks at their second language,” Garret muttered. Hamsah crossed his arms.

The door opened. Ember snapped her gaze back to the house in time to see a woman step onto the porch. Her hair was jet black, cut short to her shoulders, and her skin was porcelain-pale in comparison to Jade’s. She was wearing a pink hoodie, leggings, and no shoes, and looked vaguely disgruntled at the aspect of unexpected visitors. She said something to Jade and crossed her arms, to which Jade gave a response that Ember couldn’t understand. Hamsah didn’t translate that time. Finally, the woman gave a nod, and Jade turned to motion them in. Ember gave a breath of relief as Jade and Chensha both disappeared inside, leaving them to follow.

It was a nice house, with wide hallways— wide enough, Ember noticed, that she could shift into her true form without worrying about knocking anything over. Chensha lead them to a room with a table and four chairs, with a window facing what looked to be a courtyard. Ember could see a kitchen beyond that.

Chensha sat down and looked them all over, head cocked to the side. Looking up close, Ember could tell that she was probably around Riley’s age, even if it was a bit hard to tell. She finally said a string of words, looking at Riley as she spoke. Her face wasn’t quite as good at being neutral compared to the Elder Council. Dante would know exactly what she was thinking, and Ember knew that she was either annoyed or worried.

Considering her circumstances, probably both.

“I don’t often have guests and had no warning of your arrival, so forgive me for my lack of hospitality,” Jade translated. She took a seat as well. “My name is Geung Chensha. Yuu— Jade has already introduced you, Cobalt, though I don’t know the names of your friends. I’m guessing that this is bad, if a Xuan is involved and Europeans have entered the mix in a…” Jade faltered, and Chensha raised her eyebrows expectantly. “Non-hostile manner.”

_ A Xuan.  _ Ember didn’t realize how important Jade’s family had to be if everyone knew it. And still, here Jade was, with  _ them.  _ Ember didn’t know whether to feel honored or concerned.

“It… is,” Riley said. His gaze flickered between Jade and Chensha a few times before he shook himself and sat across from her. “I’m Cobalt. That’s Nanren, Mao, and Hamsah. We’re… friends. I’m the leader of an underground of Talon defects, and we’ve gotten word that Talon is moving against East Asia.”

He paused and let Jade continue translating, eyes flicking between the two of them. She spoke to Jade, who responded just as quickly, before turning back to Cobalt.

“I’m not like Jade, Cobalt. I don’t have any power with the Council or the Elder Council. My family is simple, and it doesn’t hold influence with others of my kind. Talon doesn’t have a reason to know my name. Why do you approach me?” Jade translated. There was a slight pause. “Unless you’re recruiting for your… underground.”

There was another slight pause before Riley said, “We’re not.” 

Ember knew better. The idea of having  _ some  _ sort of alliance with East Asia was appealing to her, as well.

“Do you know about the Night of Fang and Fire?”

Jade translated, and Chensha furrowed her brow and responded. There was a brief conversation between the two of them before her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. She whispered something and covered her mouth.

“She does, now,” Jade whispered. She said something softly and put a hand on Chensha’s shoulder. 

Chensha gave a nod and muttered a few things. Jade winced. Ember looked questioningly at Hamsah.

“She just gave Jade her condolences for the loss of her sister,” he whispered softly. “Xuan Lan.”

Ember nodded. She hadn’t heard Lan’s name come up very often, but she had guessed who she was to Jade and Xinguang days ago.

“If you are not looking for people to rise against Talon, then why are you here?” Chensha was looking directly at Riley, eyes unrelenting and intense. 

“We’re here to give aid. No repayment needed,” Riley said. “Jade made the decision to join our side of the fight, but we understand that there are many who want nothing to do with it, and we want to give you the right to decide for yourself. However, Talon is acting more aggressive than ever before concerning China, and my… organization knows the most about how to fight them.”

Ember tuned out for most of the conversation thereafter— she already knew the situation, and had heard it explained over and over again. Instead, she looked over the room, trying to find the best mode to fight this Viper, whoever they may be. She hoped that Chensha would lock up anything that she didn’t want broken, because if Ember knew anything, it was that it wasn’t going to be a pretty fight. 

The good news about this house was that it seemed to be designed that a young adult dragon could maneuver with a fair amount of ease, which would give them an advantage over an adult Viper. The bad news was that there were so many entrances that they couldn’t cover them all. And they couldn’t tip the Viper off to the fact that they were there, either, or she’d simply move onto her next location.

“We’re going to have to have someone in her room,” Hamsah muttered to her and Garret. “It’s assassination 101: if you can get away with killing someone while they’re sleeping…”

“I call not doing that,” Garret said quickly.

“I’m saying it’s gonna either be Ember or Jade,” Hamsah shrugged. “We’ll want someone close to the main entrance and in the courtyard as well. From there, it’s just… managing to capture a Viper without killing them.” He let out a long breath, eyes widening slightly. “An  _ elite  _ Viper.”

“Well, we managed to chase off Lilith, once,” Ember pointed out, even though they hadn’t gotten close to actually  _ subduing  _ her. The only reason she ran in Crescent Beach was because the appearance of Garret meant the Order wasn’t far behind. “And we did manage to kill her.”  _ But not before she stabbed Tristan in the head. _

It looked like Hamsah was thinking similar thoughts.

“Subduing is a lot harder than killing,” Garret muttered.

“No shit,” Hamsah said. “I honestly don’t know how much help I’ll be to you guys. I can help with security, but…”

Ember twitched, mind straying back to the question she felt was too sensitive to ask. But she needed to know, and she needed to know  _ before  _ they were being attacked by a Viper who had more training than both of them combined.

“Have you actually killed anyone before?” Ember asked softly. Hamsah flinched slightly. “ _ No? _ ”

“Yes,” he muttered, looking anywhere but at Ember and Garret. “I got quite good at it, actually. I made my trainer very proud.” He crossed his arms. “Half of the reason I forgave your boyfriend in the first place is because there’s a nonzero chance I’ve killed a few of his friends.”

It was Ember’s turn to hide a flinch. “Oh.” She swallowed. “Uh… thanks for telling me.”

“As I said, I won’t be the most use. My trainer taught me how to come in fast and kill with maximum efficiency. Knocking someone out isn’t my forte.”

“You think it’s either of ours?” Garret said.

“I know it’s not  _ yours,  _ soldier. But Ember was trained by  _ Lilith.  _ Lilith had three hundred years to hone her craft, so she might have taught her star student how to subdue people. Or dragons.”

“I also only have two months of training,” Ember pointed out.

“So that’s a  _ no, _ ” Hamsah said. 

Ember didn’t have a response, so they settled back into silence. Jade and Chensha were talking back and forth, but Riley seemed to have retreated out of the conversation. Ember didn’t speak Mandarin, but she could read the tone well enough to catch Jade’s faint frustration.

“Hamsah. You know what’s happening?” Riley muttered. Jade shot a weak glare in his general direction. “Or you could enlighten me. Either way is good.”

“Chensha is presenting the entirely intelligent idea of leaving her current location. This is just a house. She could flee before a Viper shows up rather than being… I believe your idiom is  _ being bait  _ for a Viper. She doesn’t see the point of risking her life simply to build trust between you and the Elder Council,” Jade said.

Riley gave a slight sigh and looked back at Chensha. “We need information from this Viper. There is the option to run, but considering that you’re on their hit list, they’ll keep going after you until one of you exhausts yourself or until you decide to confront it. I find that confronting a Viper is much more successful when you have allies on your side.”

Chensha cocked her head to the side and spoke. 

“Are we allies, Cobalt?”

“We are trying to be,” Riley said, his voice open and calm. “But even though we know the most about the situation, we need more information to be effective.”

There was a long silence between them. Ember tried not to fidget. Then Chensha turned to Jade and spoke. Her voice had a hard edge to it. Jade blinked and nodded, offering a polite smile. Chensha rolled her eyes back, muttered something under her breath, and left for the kitchen.

“One week,” Jade said softly. “That’s what she gave us.”

Riley nodded. He stood, chair scraping against the wood. “We can work with that.” He turned to Ember. “So, what are our thoughts on terms of security?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. That's Chensha.


	7. Ember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am still alive. Let's go.

As trips to China went, the next three days were not what Ember imagined. Riley meticulously mapped out where they could stand without being seen through the windows and forced everyone except Chensha and Jade to stand there during the day. Jade and Chensha weren’t allowed to acknowledge them unless they were also out of sight of the windows. At night, the curtains were drawn and they were allowed to move a bit more freely, but weren’t allowed to talk. 

Turned out, she and Garret were the only people who easily got antsy in this sort of situation. Riley and Hamsah, annoyingly enough, were both perfectly adept with staying silent and still, and Jade actually  _ enjoyed  _ sitting and being silent. 

Not to say that she hadn’t noticed everyone beginning to show signs of wear. Riley had circles under his eyes nearly as dark as Wes’ and periodically checked and rechecked that they had the supplies they needed; weapons, truth-serum, and shifting suppressant. Any attempts to talk about the mission beyond subduing the Viper was met with a quick, not-at-all subtle change in subject. Hamsah had gotten ahold of a ballpoint pen and spent most of his time drawing on his hands and feet, washing it off, and restarting. When he wasn’t drawing, he was pulling at the fabric of the Viper suit he had borrowed from Mist. Garret kept stripping and reassembling his gun, but there wasn’t much new about that. Ember didn’t think that Jade was actually sleeping.

In a way, it was a relief when a Viper broke in and tried to murder them.

Ember stationed herself near the back door that night. She knew that Riley was in the courtyard, pressed into the shadows, while Hamsah was at the front door and Garret stood guard outside Chensha’s bedroom door. Jade was in Chensha’s bedroom keeping watch. Ember was half-considering going to sleep— the night was mostly over, and she hadn’t slept in twenty hours. She knew that the exhaustion was starting to weigh on Hamsah as well, and the anxiety of waiting wasn’t helping Riley whatsoever. Sleep sounded nice. She could just lay down and no one would notice.

There was a creak of wooden floorboards in another room. Ember blinked the exhaustion out of her eyes just in time to hear Hamsah give a loud scream. She nearly jumped out of her skin. There was the unmistakable sound of a shift and loud, splintering wood. Ember jumped to her feet and cleared the length of the house in five seconds. 

She had seen a lot in the past half a year, but seeing half a second of action and knowing that the only thing keeping all of them alive was the fact that a Viper wasn’t shifting was still enough to make her freeze.

The woman moved like water, attacking efficiently and ducking out of the way before anyone could land a blow, even in the confined space. Hamsah was shifted fully, a lithe copper dragon with golden markings over his face and wings, matching her as best as he could. Ember could barely see her until she moved, a hooked knife in her hand as she lunged at his throat. Hamsah shifted back into human form flawlessly, caught her hand while planting his feet, and shifted again to throw her into the wall.

All in half a second.

The woman caught herself on the wall and rolled under him before he could lunge again, and Hamsah shifted back to his human form, kneeling on the ground to keep her from—

Ember’s heart stopped.

Hamsah was kneeling over Garret, unmoving on the floor.

Ember growled as the woman’s knife flashed and Hamsah shifted again, knife sinking into his scales instead of a human neck. Ember jumped forward and tried to grab the hand with the knife only for the woman to slash at her. Ember raised her arm in just enough time for it to find its mark there instead of her chest. Hamsah— human, again— grabbed her and drove her head into his knee. She grabbed it and  _ threw him  _ into a wall. Ember grabbed her gun from her waist band only for the woman to disarm her just as quickly. Ember punched her once, twice in the throat. The third time, even as she heaved for breath, she grabbed Ember’s arm, twisted until it  _ popped,  _ and drew Ember closer until they were nose to nose.

Ember couldn’t help but freeze as poison-green eyes met her own. The woman’s nose was bleeding badly, but even through the mess of blood she could see total apathy on the Viper’s face.

A copper dragon rammed into both of them, toppling them to the ground, and the woman hit something in his sternum that made him lock up. Ember sprang at her before she could move again and bashed her head as hard as possible onto the floor. She scrambled on top of the Viper and wrapped her fingers around her throat, knowing perfectly that the woman could shift at any moment.

The woman who still had a dagger in her hand, that Ember couldn’t deflect unless she took her hands away—

Hamsah grabbed the woman’s arm and twisted. There was a sickening  _ snap.  _

The woman went tense under the two of them, struggles growing weak under Ember’s hands.

Then she went still.

Hamsah was gasping for breath, eyes wide, hair tangled beyond what Ember thought was possible. He was bleeding from a gash uncomfortably close to his neck. Ember carefully took her fingers off the woman’s neck. She didn’t move. She was pretty, under the blood of a broken nose and multiple bruises and what she was trying to—

“Garret,” Ember breathed, shooting to her feet. Garret was still on the floor, unmoving, and the Viper had a  _ knife— _

“He’s alive,” Hamsah interrupted. He sounded like he was in pain. “It was a knockout punch. Not lethal. And he managed to get a few blows in before he went down. I’m impressed.”

Ember let out a shaky breath as she looked back at Garret. He  _ was  _ breathing. He looked uninjured, other than the fact that he wasn’t moving. She knelt beside him and rolled him onto his back, where she could see a dark bruise stretching from his temple to his jaw. She winced. It would  _ hurt,  _ but it wasn’t lethal. 

There was a retching sound behind her.

“You okay over there?” Ember asked. The retching continued. “Is this an emotional reaction, or…”

“Shifting in combat is  _ excellent  _ when you can do it properly,” Hamsah gasped. “But it is  _ so unpleasant. _ ”

Ember winced again. “Why didn’t  _ she  _ shift?”

Hamsah coughed, but he seemed to have gotten everything out of his system. “Because your boyfriend decided to play hero. You cant shift when you have pocket knife embedded in your chest and two assholes aren’t giving you the time to take it out.”

Ember did a double take. The viper did, in fact, have a knife in her side, lodged to the hilt between her ribs. She had fought that efficiently with a  _ knife  _ in her side. And a head wound. And after being hit in the throat  _ twice.  _ She had taken it like it was nothing.

Super elite Vipers, indeed.

“Thanks for coming in,” Hamsah muttered. “I was... struggling.”

“Don’t mention it,” Ember said. “Uh… who  _ is  _ she?”

Hamsah didn’t even look at the Viper, instead inspecting his Viper suit curiously.  _ Too  _ closely— Ember didn’t have to be a chameleon to know he was trying to avoid the fact that he had nearly killed a dragon. “I never met her. I wasn’t exactly in a place where I could network or call for… afternoon get togethers.”

“You knew Faith.”

Hamsah winced. “That’s only because we were training at the same time.”

“She’s Hyena,” Riley said, flicking on a lamplight. Ember tensed at his voice before she realized who he was. He looked vaguely ill. “Or, that’s what Stealth called her back when we were still on good terms. It’s probably not her real name; she liked nicknames. I only met Hyena once. A good killer, from what I could tell. Emotionless. Ruthless.” His eyes flickered to Hamsah. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m… okay. It’s a mission. I did what was necessary.”

“Yeah. You did. You both did.” Riley nodded. He ran and hand through his hair and gulped. “What happened to St. George?”

“He’s suffering from  _ ‘got too close to a Viper’  _ syndrome,” Hamsah muttered. “But it’s just a concussion. I kept her killing him while he was down.” He took a breath. “Couldn’t have given us any help?”

“You two have very distinct fighting styles. I would’ve gotten in the way,” Riley shook his head. Hamsah gave a grudging shrug. “Are either of you hurt?”

“Nothing that we can’t fix ourselves,” Ember said, looking down at her arm. Dislocated, but not broken. It wasn’t the first time she had dislocated a wrist. Hamsah was standing like he had definitely cracked a few ribs, but didn’t look like he was in any danger or overwhelming amounts of pain.

“One of us needs to tell Jade and Chensha that the coast is clear. Jade is set on guarding her, so she isn’t going to leave her until she gets word,” Riley said. He took a breath. Ember could hear it shake. “Hamsah? You’re the one that speaks Mandarin.”

“Right. I’ll… stand watch outside after I do that.” Hamsah gave a stiff nod and left down the hallway. 

Riley looked down at Garret and nudged him with his foot. When he stirred slightly, Riley lightly kicked him in the hip.

“St. George. You gotta wake up,” Riley muttered. “You can’t sleep on the floor. It’s… not sanitary.”

“ _ God,  _ my head hurts…” Garret muttered.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you try to attack a Viper with a knife. You got guts, but I worry over your survival instinct,” Riley said. Garret groaned softly, but took Riley’s offered hand and only stumbled slightly when he stood. “No one is dead. Except for… a Viper, pretty soon. When I’m... done with her.” Riley worked his jaw for a few moments, looking between the two of them. “I’ll be perfectly honest with the two of you. I  _ really  _ don’t want to do this.”

“We’re aware,” Ember said. “I don’t think any less of you for what’s going to happen. Or how you got this skill set.”

“It’s what has to be done,” Garret added. 

“I know. I know,” Riley let out a gust of air and raked a hand through his hair. “Guess there’s no point in putting it off, then. We’ll be in the courtyard. I… I’d rather not have anyone interrupt. I’m not particularly…” He pursed his lips. “I’m not me when I’m doing what I’m about to do. I change everything about my behavior, and my morals, and— and it gives me distance, but… I don’t want anyone to see me like that.” He gulped. “And I’m taking a shower right after. And then calling Wes. Don’t try to mess with that schedule.”

“Understood.”

Riley nodded and withdrew a syringe from his coat pocket, kneeling next to the Viper. He inserted the needle with an ease born only of practice before he hefted her into his arms and disappeared through the door. 

“Can one of you get a chair, too? And rope? It’s in the sitting room.”

“I’ll do it,” Ember nodded. “Garret should get ice. For the head.”

Setting up the interrogation was simultaneously the easiest and the hardest thing she had done. She and Hamsah had done a number on this Viper— her nose was still bleeding, her neck and temple were both bruised, and her shoulder was swollen with a break— so she didn’t even stir as Riley secured her to the chair. He was thorough, even as his hands shook. Ember wondered if he had done this once in the eleven years he had been out of Talon, but she was too afraid of the answer to ask. He took out a switchblade and tested it on his thumb, watching it bleed for a few seconds. He took another breath.

“Some Basilisks enjoy this part of the job,” he said into the silence. “Luther seemed pretty happy when he broke all of my fingers and pulverized Garret’s ribcage.”

“Well, you’re an ex-Basilisk for a reason,” Ember said. “Like Garret’s a former soldier and Hamsah’s an ex-Viper.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I think Jade’s the only one here who doesn’t have amendments to make, and she’s still a bit too okay with murder for me to completely believe that.”

“And you. You don’t have amendments to make.”

“Not anymore.”

Riley snorted, but didn’t respond to deny the statement. 

“When I was in Talon, people thought I enjoyed it. I hated it, but I knew how to act around my— my  _ victims,  _ how to terrify them, make them think they were at the mercy of a sadist, and—” the words came out fast, like he didn’t want to talk but didn’t have a choice in the matter. “I was scared when I left Talon, you know. But I was so grateful that I’d never have to do this again.”

Beside them, the Viper stirred faintly. Riley winced, closing his eyes as his fingers tightened on the switchblade. Then something in him changed, and his face lit up in a brilliant, genuine smile as he turned to the Viper. Ember slipped back out of the courtyard and shut the door as Jade came into the room. She didn’t say anything as Ember sat down, her back to the door, listening to the muffled voices. Riley sounded happy. He sounded excited.

Jade sat down across from her.

“How’s Chensha?”

“Alive. I told her to sleep. She hasn’t gotten nearly enough with our company, and I doubt she’ll get much more for a time. She plans on leaving for a time. Going to an ancestral temple. She wants us to leave as soon as possible, too.” Jade said, her voice soft. She looked beyond Ember, at the door she was guarding. “That doesn’t seem like a good place to be. I doubt that what Cobalt is about to do is something he’d want you to hear.”

Ember didn’t move. There was a thick silence between them. After two minutes, it was interrupted by a sharp scream. Ember flinched.

“This… sucks,” she whispered.

“Yes,” Jade agreed. “Come outside. There’s nothing that we can do now except for give Cobalt some privacy.” Ember still didn’t move. Riley was laughing softly. He had always been a good actor.  _ Master of BS.  _ “I respect your drive to share Cobalt’s burden, but I know for a fact that he didn’t ask you to.”

“He has a bit of a habit of trying to handle too much, though. In case you didn’t notice.”

“Trust me, I have,” Jade said, as another scream sounded from behind them. Ember cringed away from the noise, just as another scream erupted. Hyena was spitting profanities, a mixture of butchered Draconic and English. They cut off sharply. Too sharply.

“On second thought… we have a secure phone, right? I haven’t called Dante in days.”

“We do indeed. Come outside.”

Ember followed Jade outside without further protest. The sun was starting to rise, bathing everything around them in pink and orange. Garret was sitting on the steps of the porch, and Hamsah stood a distance away. Chensha was nowhere to be found. Jade handed her a flip phone with two numbers in the contacts; one, she knew, reached Wes’ phone. The other belonged to their other disposable phone. She pressed the button and waited for a response.

“ _ This is Dante, _ ” came his voice, sounding rough with sleep. Ember let out a breath at the sound of his voice. He was okay. He was still alive.

“Hey, Tweedledum,” Ember greeted. She sat down next to Garret. “How are you feeling?”

“ _ Sore. Starting to think that Wes has a point about overexertion. But people are being relatively patient with me. I’ve been talking to Ms. Wanyan about what the Elder Council wants to do about the Viper problem. They don’t really trust us, still, but… I guess that’s justified. Europeans have historically screwed them over. We need to build trust before they accept any suggestions or consider evacuation. _ ”

“Ever the Chameleon.”

“ _ Former Chameleon, sis _ ,” Dante said, a bit of a whine in his voice. Ember winced. Still a sore point, then. “ _ I’m not lying to them or manipulating them. I’m just being civil and figuring out what we need to do to gain their trust. _ ” There was a pause. “ _ How are things with you?” _

“Well, we found the Viper. We’re trying to have a conversation. It’s… not fun, but I don’t have to be in the room, so I guess I’m lucky.”

There was a long silence. Ember starting chewing the inside of her cheek.

“ _ I’m sorry about kidnapping you, _ ” Dante said. “ _ And Cobalt. And Garret. I hadn’t apologized for that, yet, but I am sorry. It was heartless. _ ” There was another pause. “ _ You really like the soldier, don’t you? _ ”

“What?”

“ _ Sorry, I know it’s not my business, but… well, I didn’t take him seriously in Crescent Beach. And now you’re in love, and I completely missed out on that development while… selling my soul. We’re twins. We’re supposed to be able to talk to each other about that kind of stuff. _ ”

Ember smiled faintly. “I do love him. He’s something else. He’s brave, he’s genuinely kind, and now he’s looking at me with this idiotic-looking grin on his face. I see you staring, soldier boy.” Garret raised his hands in mock surrender. “Do  _ you _ have your eyes on anyone?”

“ _ I’ve been stuck in a basement for three weeks, and now I’m stuck in a temple with a bunch of old people. _ ”

“So?” Ember asked. “You and Mist have history. Oh, and Tristan was your knight in shining armor for a moment there. Who knows, he might be gay. Garret just rolled his eyes, but there’s a chance!”

“ _ Mist is twenty-one, _ ” Dante said drily.  _ “And so is Tristan. I think.”  _ There was a pause. “ _ I have no feelings of romance. But I do miss my friends. _ ” He gave a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “ _ Can you tell Hamsah I said hi?” _

Ember pursed her lips and looked over at Hamsah, who was staring into the fields, eyes focused on nothing. It wasn’t a good day for him.

“I’ll do that,” Ember said. “But don’t get your hopes up. Keep yourself rested, okay?”

“ _ Yeah, yeah, no more climbing mountains, _ ” Dante said, and Ember could almost hear him roll his eyes. “ _ See you soon, Tweedledee. _ ”

_ The nickname is finally starting to stick.  _ “See you.” Ember ended the conversation.

After a few moments of staring at the fields around her, she stood and walked over to Hamsah. He didn’t acknowledge her. He looked exhausted. The cut on his neck wasn’t bleeding anymore, but he hadn’t made any effort to clean up the wound, leaving the blood to dry on its own.

“Dante says hi,” she said. 

“Duly noted,” he responded, deadpan. But after a moment, his eyes focused and he raked his hand through his hair, undoing some of the snarls.

“You did well.”

“I was sloppy,” he dismissed. “I was way too loud. If she had been in a position to shift, we’d both be dead, and that’s because I wasn’t able to take her by surprise. If my trainer had seen that...” he shuddered. “It would guarantee me a two-hour lecture and a twelve-hour training session, and that’s if she’s generous.”

“Well, there’s a reason you’re not a Viper,” Ember shrugged. “ _ I _ think you did well. That was an elite Viper you and I took down.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to if Garret Sebastian hadn’t stabbed her. And even then, I had to shift. I should’ve been able to take her by surprise and slit her throat cleanly,” Hamsah said. He seemed to cringe away from his own words. “Sorry. We needed her alive. It’s hard to remember that.”

Ember didn’t know how to respond to that, so she didn’t. She was never more grateful that she left Talon when she did than when she talked with Hamsah. It ached to know that he was lucky in his own right. He could’ve ended up like Faith.  _ She  _ could’ve ended up like Faith.

“I meant it when I apologized to him, you know,” Hamsah said. “Garret. Kain Broussard is also sorry, but he values his pride too much to ever admit it, and I think it’s a whole lot easier to say that he hates St. George rather than admit that he blames himself for his friend’s death.”

“Wait,” Ember interrupted. “Kain  _ Broussard?  _ What kind of a last name is Broussard?”

“A Cajun last name,” Hamsah smiled, even though it was a bit shaky. “Ask him to speak French, sometime. He’s quite good at it, once you get past the accent.”

“And here I am, proud that I speak English.”

“English is hard.” Hamsah shrugged. “Two languages is plenty, if you ask me.”

Ember pursed her lips and thought over her words before she spoke. Hamsah wasn’t her friend. Not really. They had their training in common, and it was nice to have someone who understood what it had been like, but they weren’t  _ friends.  _ He had Astatine and Kain back at the farmhouse, who knew him for more than how efficiently he could kill and the pain it caused. He wasn’t even Dante’s friend, anymore. It wasn’t her place to talk to him.

“You know… Dante meant it when he apologized, too. I know that what he did doesn’t compare to trying to punch Garret a few times—”

“I’m grateful for what your brother did with the Vessel Labs,” Hamsah interrupted. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking into the field, eyes fixed on something that she couldn’t see. “What he did was horrible while he was in Talon, but I’m not exactly in a position to talk. All of my problems surrounding Dante Hill are my own fault. So I have no problem with him walking around the Underground as a free person. He can do a lot more to help, that way. And if we’re locking everyone up who’s made horrible decisions when they were working for Talon or St. George, I know perfectly well which side of the bars I would be on.” He took a breath and closed his eyes. “That being said, I have no interest in reconciliation with Dante Hill.” There was a pause. “If you want to press the matter, I’m going to take watch elsewhere.”

“No pressing the matter,” Ember conceded. “But it’s good to know where you stand.”

“We’ll leave it at that, then.”

Ember nodded. They stood in silence for another few minutes, watching the sun creep above the horizon, before she turned and sat back down on the porch beside Garret. 

“So… are you ever going to tell me what Dante did to warrant getting locked in the basement?” he asked softly, without taking his eyes off of the sky. Ember froze beside him. “I’m not angry, but I’m not stupid, either. I know that something came to light. I know that Tristan knows about it, so he and Mist probably figured it out before he…” there was a pause, where he seemed to struggle with his words “...died for a few minutes. And I think that you don’t want the Order to know, or else you would’ve told me by now.”

Ember didn’t respond. Her throat felt strangely tight. There was nothing she could say. If  _ Tristan  _ opted not to tell Garret about what happened, she wasn’t about to, either.

“Tristan really likes you if he’s willing to keep a secret from... the Order,” he continued. Ember looked over, but he kept his eyes on the horizon. 

“And from you,” Ember finished.

“And from me,” Garret conceded, and Ember tried not to hear the edges of hurt in his voice. “I’m honestly afraid over what made the two of you click.”

Ember pursed her lips. “Well, we both love  _ you,  _ soldier boy.” It was Garret’s turn for silence. “I can’t tell you. Tristan… made the choice not to tell the Order. And he asked that we didn’t tell you, either. Considering everything he did for me, I feel like I should honor that request.”

“Now I’m  _ really  _ concerned.” Garret finally tore his eyes away from the sunrise. “Neither of you are dying, right? Like, more so than Tristan already died. Do one of you have cancer, or… AIDS? Can dragons get AIDS?”

“No.  _ No.  _ If I were dying, you’d be one of the first to know. I don’t think dragons can get AIDS.” Ember shrugged. “And if Tristan’s dying, he didn’t tell me. I’m pretty sure that you’d be the first to know in that case, too. He just… saved my brother’s life. This is something I can do to repay him.”

“Good,” Garret said. “I guess I’m going to have a talk with him when we get back.”

“Don’t be mad at him,” Ember nudged Garret. “And… don’t press the matter. Please.” There was a silence. “I know he screwed up a lot of times, but he’s my brother, and he’s trying to do better. Some things should stay unknown.”

Garret didn’t respond to that. He looked back out at the sky. It was a gorgeous sight to behold, and something that Ember didn’t often see. When she turned to the sky, it was for rainclouds and starry nights. She watched the dawn skies of pink and orange turn blue and cloudless. Eventually, she rested her head on Garret’s shoulder. She heard Jade and Chensha speak on the porch, and after the last of dawn turned into day, Chensha revved her motorcycle and drove down the dirt road, leaving the underground representatives completely alone.

She barely noticed when the door opened and Riley sat down beside her. When she looked at him, his hair was wet, and he smelled strongly of soap and disinfectant. It wasn’t quite enough to mask the tear stains on his skin.

“I have what we need,” he whispered hoarsely. “She’s… her name was Hyaeni. I think it’s important to know. We’ll need to bury her before too long.”

Ember looked back towards the door, a heavy weight in her chest. They had what they needed. This was meant to be a victory.

She felt sick.

“I can take care of that,” Garret said.

Riley nodded. It was a testament to what he had to be feeling that he didn’t claim that he could handle it himself. When Ember leaned over and hugged him, he didn’t respond.

“I’d like to call Wes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) This is fine :) no one is traumatized :) everything will be okay :)


	8. Dante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I have cut out several hundred words of filler dialogue, and the chapter's still over 5,600 words. I think that the chapter after this one is less than 1,000 words. I have now decided that consistency in chapter length is overrated. So have this 5.5k chapter as a treat.

Dante spent the first day in the temple completely immobile. He didn’t move off of his bed, even though he was starving by the end of his quarantine that no one meant to give him. By day two, he managed to force himself up and limp short distances, trying to keep himself out of everyone’s way but needing to at least stand long enough to find food. He ended up going to bed early, but he still managed. Day three and four, and he started doing what he did best: talking to people he had no business talking to. He didn’t say anything about the underground— he didn’t want it to seem like he was pushing an agenda— but he did want to know who everyone was and their stances.

By the end of those four days, Dante knew who the Elder Council was composed of: Wanyan Lianhua, the oldest, who seemed to have the most sway and had enough trust in Jade to let her vouch; Lei Wang Shu, nearly the age of a Wyrm, who was interested in what Cobalt had to say but apparently hated Dante on a personal level— he  _ definitely  _ knew the Elder Wyrm as more than a figurehead; Wan Guifei, who had no trust in anything associated with Talon— Dante had a feeling she had been burned before; Jiang Ruo, who was surprisingly sympathetic to Cobalt’s cause after what he had said about the Feathered Serpents; and Shen Nianzu, the youngest— still older than 500— who refused to talk to Dante. That told him everything he needed to know.

Day five, Ember called. Everyone was alive, and they were coming back.

The sun was making its way below the horizon when he heard familiar voices in the courtyard. He peered out the window to see Xinguang greet them, bowing slightly to Cobalt before he ushered Jade inside. Everyone else trailed behind them, and Dante rushed down the hall quickly as he could, passing by a human monk with barely a glance. He could move from place to place with more ease, since he was no longer required to climb stairs to escape his room, but he still barely caught up to them before Jade and Xinguang entered the meeting room and closed the door in their faces.

“Well, it could’ve been a kinder welcome,” Ember noted drily. “We climbed a mountain for this?”

“The weather’s not  _ too _ bad,” Cobalt said, even as he shivered. He took his gloves off and rubbed his hands together.

“Goddamn snow,” Ember muttered.

“I feel that complaining about the location of the Lung Miao is a bit counter productive,” Dante said. Ember turned around, and Riley twitched enough for Dante to know that he had already known of his presence. “How was the mission?”

“We have our information and one less Viper to worry about. Jade is telling the Council everything, and they’ll figure out what they want to do in the morning,” Ember said. “Why they’ve decided to take so long about getting an answer—”

“That was my request, actually. We deserve a reprieve,” Riley said. He took a deep breath. “I’m going to bed. It’s been... a really shitty day.”

Dante furrowed his brow and Riley brushed past him, Hamsah following a second later. This was supposed to be good news. They had information to work with, now.  _ Real  _ information. He knew that this underground didn’t take murder as lightly as Talon did, but he didn’t expect Riley to be upset over the death of a Viper.

“What happened?” he asked. There was a stiff silence after his words, and after about a half minute, Garret excused himself to go to the courtyard, even though he only had a wool sweater for protection. Ember started walking back to their room, and Dante followed half a pace behind her.

“There are seven Vipers in China. They’re led by Stealth, so we got that right,” Ember said as she closed their door. “It was supposed to be Lilith in charge, but… guess you took care of that. You and Mist are  _ priorities _ now, by the way.” Dante stiffened. “Whoever brings you back dead is promoted, whoever brings you back alive gets that and a personal favor from the Elder Wyrm herself. Riley said that you should know that.”

Dante gulped. “Does he have a similar warrant out?”

“I mean, it’s a given within Talon that if you see him, you try to murder him, but it’s been like that for the past ten years. Is that reassuring?”

“Not at all. What else?”

“Stealth is the one after the census. She probably killed Jade’s mom. She won’t be able to fight off everyone in this temple, so she probably has a damn smart plan to get in and out without being caught. Once they get the census, they planned to wipe as many people out as possible until there’s a state of emergency called. Everyone will be in the same place, so it’ll be easy to blow everyone up. Just like the labs,” she gave a humorless smile. “It’s actually quite a good plan. It won’t get everyone, but it’ll get enough to cripple the population. They’d die out in a few generations. And now that we killed one of them, they know that someone knows, so we’ve lost our upper hand.”

“So we’ve incurred their wrath.”

“We already had their wrath.” Ember shrugged. It wasn’t nearly as nonchalant as she seemed to think it was. Dante sat down on his bed. “We don’t know specifically where they all are, but in theory, we only need to kill five of them before they declare the mission doomed.”

“Uh-huh… how hard was it to kill one?”

“Well… It wasn’t pleasant. Nearly burned a house down. Hamsah would’ve gotten his throat slit if he had any slower reflexes.” Dante clenched his jaw. “He’s fine. He’s okay. We’re all just a bit... shaken.” She started chewing on the inside of her cheek and wringing her hands. Dante needed to teach her how to minimize her tells.

“Cobalt seemed more rattled than I thought he’d be,” Dante said. He tried to say it conversationally, but that didn’t stop Ember from wincing. “Did he know the Viper?”

“No. Well, only in passing. It was just… hard. On everyone,” she said. She dragged a hand through her hair— she hadn’t done that before she met Cobalt— and gave a soft groan. “ _ Really  _ hard. I don’t like Vipers.”

“Well,” Dante said. “I guess the sooner we get rid of them, the better.”

Ember nodded. He knew that  _ not liking Vipers  _ ran further than not wanting to be killed by one, that it was about seeing exactly what she could’ve become, what she was capable of doing, but there was nothing he could say.

So he didn’t say anything.

*

The Elder Council was much more receptive after the Underground proved themselves and came with real information. They handed the census to Xinguang, who swore not to let it fall into disrepair, and decided to issue a state of emergency to anyone they could contact. It wouldn’t help everyone, but it would slow Most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to track down any other Vipers and, most importantly, how to handle Stealth.

_ Stealth.  _ Dante had learned more about her in the past day than he had learned throughout all of his time in Talon. She was a young adult, trained under Lilith, who had gone on three missions with Cobalt back in the day, apparently. She had saved his life. He had nearly killed her, and rendered her permanently unable to fly. She still excelled in her field, all with a busted wing and limited range of motion in one of her arms.

“Were you friends?” Ember asked softly at one point, soft enough that she probably thought no one could overhear. Sitting around a round table, the scene before him felt so much like a conference that his skin itched.

“The best approximation a Viper and a Basilisk could mimic,” Riley muttered back. He looked like he hadn’t slept last night. “She turned on me the moment I left. Asked  _ personally  _ to kill me. Didn’t turn out well for her, though.”

“Knowing that this  _ Stealth  _ is looking for the census begs the question of if we should send Xinguang away,” Ms. Wanyan said, turning to Xinguang. “You have allies in the Naiman Clan that would shelter you, and it’s harder to find a nomadic person than a stationary one.”

“I’m not sending my brother off alone when he’s carrying the only copy of the census. The risk of his death is too great,” Jade responded quickly. Mr. Lei opened his mouth to respond, but she talked over him without hesitation. “He would be fairly safe in Mongolia and would have protection, I agree, but the journey there would leave him exposed and without allies. All due respect to you, Xinguang, but he’s not a fighter. And if Stealth is circling, she’d kill an exposed Shen Lung even if she  _ didn’t  _ know about the census.”

“Yuu—”

“I am now leader of the Xuan family, and Xinguang is under my care. I understand your reasoning, but I’m not risking my brother.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Xinguang asked.

“No,” Jade said. Xinguang gave her a dead-eyed glare. “I’m sorry. You are an adult, and you can make your own decisions. But it’s my job to keep us both alive.”

“The Naiman Clan is a good Clan. They’re smart, resourceful, and they defend their own. And once I got there, I would be indistinguishable from any other human,” he said.

“I’m not questioning the trust you have in them. I fear what the journey would bring,” Jade replied. She clenched her fists on the table and closed her eyes. “If you were to leave, I would want to go with you.”

Xinguang gave a stiff nod. “The decision doesn’t have to be made here and now. We can… talk about it. Privately.”

“Waiting for Stealth to attack isn’t a smart decision, either,” Dante said. “From what Lan-se given of their history, I highly doubt that we can surprise her, after what he did the last time she didn’t properly stake out an area. That type of experience gives you paranoia. If we have bait, we might be able to get her off guard, but we can’t risk the census. I can’t think of anything else that would serve as a lure that couldn’t kill from a long distance.”

“I think we should not focus all of our attention on  _ Stealth.  _ Did you not say there were seven others?” Mr. Shen asked.

“Six, now,” Cobalt corrected, pulling at his hair as he spoke. “One is in the Northeast, near the Korean border. His name is Demetri, I’m having someone in the States try to draw information up on him. Another is in Shanghai. Seraphina, who is… horrifying, to be blunt. Hyaeni didn’t know where any of the others are.”

“We took injury in a fight with a target caught completely unaware of our existence, and she was around your age,” Garret said. “If we go into a firefight with someone on Lilith’s level…”

“We’re fucked,” Cobalt finished. He winced as he accidentally tore several strands of hair out and shook himself, raking it out of his eyes. “Seraphina is at that level. Stealth isn't quite there, but I’m guessing she’s close.”

“She is the definition of ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. She’s been training nonstop since you nearly killed her. There’s a  _ reason  _ she’s leading this mission instead of any of the older Vipers in the program. I don’t think she has a single non-lethal hobby,” Hamsah said softly. Dante furrowed his brow. There was fear in Hamsah’s voice, but under that, there was a faint awe.

Hamsah caught his gaze and sent him a venomous glare, his eyes were a bit too bright for it to have any power. 

“If it’s alright with everyone, I think I shouldn’t be part of this conversation anymore. I can’t give impartial information, and… I think it would be best if I didn’t know all of the details,” he stood slowly, receiving several puzzled or suspicious looks from the other Shen-Lungs, and a pitying look from Cobalt.

“You know the most about the program, Hamsah,” Cobalt said softly. “Sit down. Only a few more hours.”

Dante looked away and continued to listen to the conversation. He didn’t have any more information to add, but he did contribute whenever the Elder Council and the Underground had a disagreement. Even though Cobalt had proven his case and Jade had vouched for them, it was Dante who they had seen the most, so he was back in the position of diplomat.

He thought he had left his Chameleon position behind in Talon.

Three hours later, everyone was too exhausted to continue, and Dante was ready to jump out of his skin. They ultimately decided to stay in the temple with a rotating schedule to make sure at least one adult dragon was always awake. Shanghai was the other matter they argued the most over. Apparently, nearly all city-dwelling Shen-Lungs were in Shanghai, and most of them didn’t involve themselves with the council. Having a Viper there was a death sentence for the population. But they couldn’t exactly hunt down a Viper in the middle of the most populated city in the world, either.

They decided to sleep on it.

Dante wasn’t interested in sleeping. He had too much to think about. Talon. East Asia. The dead cultures that Talon was responsible for. Ember and her fear of Vipers. Cobalt. His friends that weren’t his friends anymore. His mind strayed to Faith a few times, but he tried to shut those thoughts down as soon as they came up. It was fairly easy, actually; whenever he thought about her, he focused on the pain in his spine that the cold was only making worse.

Stealth couldn’t fly, either. According to Hamsah, she could barely use her wings, and she had limited range of motion in her left arm. Dante wondered how long it took before that absence felt natural to her. He wondered how long it would take before the pain would feel natural to him. Before his  _ body—  _ human, weak, and still foreign at its core— felt natural.

He let out a long sigh. At least his lungs worked. He hadn’t forgotten how much pneumonia sucked.

It was sometime past midnight when Dante heard one of the doors in the hallway open. He went rigid. There was no sound of footsteps, but the door creaked again, and then clicked as it closed. Dante rose slowly and grabbed the gun Ember kept by her bed. There was no way he’d be able to take a Viper on by himself, but it was better to have a weapon than not. Slowly, he crept to his door and opened it a crack.

It wasn’t a Viper. Or, at least, it wasn’t Stealth.

Hamsah wasn’t trying overly hard to be unseen as he disappeared down the hall, but it still made Dante curious enough to put the gun down, open the door, and follow. He walked down the hallway, staying quiet as he passed Cobalt’s room, and turned the corner.

“What do you want, Dante Hill?”

Dante jumped, but Hamsah covered his mouth before he could make any sound. Looking at him in the dim torchlight, he looked sick. There were bags under his eyes, his lips were cracked, and his hands were clammy, even for the temperature around them. He let go of Dante and stepped back, crossing his arms.

“What are you doing up?” Dante asked.

“My question first.”

“I…” Dante paused. “I wanted to know where you were skulking off to.”

“Skulking,” Hamsah repeated, voice flat. “You know, the longer I know you, the more I wonder how you became a Chameleon.”

_ I would’ve made a good Viper, according to Lilith.  _ Dante ignored the little voice in his head.

“So, why are you up?”

Hamsah shrugged. “I wanted to go for a walk. Alone. Now go back to bed.”

“Hamsah—”

“I don’t want to talk with you.”

“I want a tattoo.”

The words came out before Dante could even think about them, which led to a few seconds of tense silence as Dante wondered where the hell  _ that  _ came from. He’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t thought about it, but with the situation at hand he had so many other things to worry about.

“What?” Hamsah finally said.

“I want advice about getting a tattoo.” He said it with a bit more certainty. “You seem to be the person to go to about that.”

Hamsah blinked and raised his brows. “ _ You.  _ Want a tattoo.”

“Yep.”

“And you want my advice.”

“Yep.”

“This sounds like a ploy to make me talk to you. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Well, who else can I go to? Cobalt?” Dante asked. “Please hear me out. Then you can walk away and I’ll go back to bed without bothering you.” Hamsah glared at him, but didn’t turn away. “You know that I’m not going to shift anytime soon. I’m stuck in this body for the time being, if not for the rest of my life, and it’s a decent body, but... I designed it while I was in Talon, with supervisors telling me what was and wasn’t acceptable to have, and now I’m  _ stuck  _ like this. I thought having some more say in what it looks like would be... nice,” Dante bit the inside of his cheek. “And if you have ink on hand, I thought it might be therapeutic for you if you wanted to stab me several hundred times.”

Hamsah clenched his jaw and looked to the side, one of his hands clenching and unclenching, as if debating whether or not to sock Dante in the jaw. He could see a drawing on that hand, done in black ink— a butterfly surrounded by leaves and stems that crawled up his fingers. It was beautiful. He was an amazing artist.

“Do you design your own tattoos?” Dante broke the silence.

“Yep,” Hamsah replied shortly.

“You’re a good artist.”

“I know.” There was a tense silence. Then Hamsah rolled his eyes slightly and rubbed at his forehead before grabbing Dante’s shirt collar and dragging them both into a different room.

“This is  _ not  _ forgiveness. But I… do happen to have ink on me. And stabbing you sounds like the closest thing I can get to therapy. So what are you thinking?” he said. Dante looked around to make sure they were alone as Hamsah lit a candle in its holder. “You could get a snake. Because you’re a snake.”

“I don’t really want anything reptilian,” Dante ignored the obvious jab. He sat down on the stone floor and tried not to shiver. Why was it so damn cold? “Your first one was on your head, right?”

“That’s veering into a personal conversation,” Hamsah said flatly. Dante tried not to feel the sting of the words.

“Well, what should I expect if I get one?”

“It hurts no matter where you get it, but the most painful place for me was actually on my head. And it itches when it heals. Don’t scratch at the scabs. I’d tell you not to shift while it’s healing, but that’s not a problem for you.”

Dante winced. “That’s a bit low.”

“Yeah, that was the point.” 

There was a stiff silence. Hamsah was still glaring at him.

Did Dante actually want to do this? He had thought about it in hypotheticals, but Hamsah had tattoo ink here and now. He had no idea what he wanted, or where he wanted it. He didn’t know if he trusted Hamsah with permanent marks on his skin. They weren’t exactly friends, anymore.

But it was past midnight, Hamsah was talking to him, and he wanted his skin to be  _ his.  _ Talon hated tattoos, especially on Chameleons.

“I was thinking something with wings would be nice,” Dante whispered.

“If you want wings on your back, the answer’s no. I don’t have enough ink.”

“ _ No.  _ I don’t want anyone touching my back. And I want it somewhere visible,” Dante said. He bit his lip. “You’re the expert here. And… I know that you hate me, but I’d... still trust you to be the artist. So what do you recommend?”

Hamsah started chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“You… are  _ not  _ getting a butterfly. I’ve had this idea for months, and I’m not wasting the design on you. And I can’t do birds. I’ve tried. I’ve failed.” He paused, meeting Dante’s gaze for a few seconds. “Are you really giving me free reign?”

_ Am I actually doing this? At two in the morning, in some guest room in a Chinese temple? By someone who isn’t a professional and dislikes me? _

This was an awful idea.

“Yeah, sure. What are you thinking?”

“That you’re impulsive.”

“Maybe.”

“Have you talked to Ember about it?”

“It’s  _ my  _ choice,” Dante said firmly. He  _ did  _ want this. And not just to have an excuse to talk to Hamsah and let him take his anger out on Dante’s skin. He had no control over his life anymore. He was so close to ultimate power within Talon, and now he had nothing. But he could do this. He could make his body into something he wasn’t trapped in.

“Could you do a dragonfly?” Dante asked.

Hamsah smirked slightly. “ _ Dragon _ fly?”

“Can you?”

“Yeah, I can do a dragonfly. I can only do lineart, though. Black and white. It’s going to be stick and poke.”

“I’m okay with that.”

Dante made the decision not to ask how Hamsah got ahold of tattoo ink in the first place, or the paper he used to sketch out the design and eventually copy it onto Dante’s inner forearm with a ballpoint pen. It was a gorgeous design— Hamsah was quite the artist— with detail and enough line depth for it to look nearly shaded. Hamsah said that thicker lines hurt more, but the way he said it, Dante had a nagging sensation that pain was partially Hamsah’s intention.

“Have you done this before?” Dante asked, even though he had no intention of backing out. Hamsah certainly looked like he knew what he was doing. He had taken Riley’s entire first aid kit.

“Once.” Hamsah bit the inside of his cheek. “One of the Bermuda Girls asked for one. Sera. It wasn’t hard, and Jess doesn’t police us when we ask her to buy things, so…”

“That’s nice of you, to do that for her.”

Hamsah jabbed him with the syringe. Dante winced. 

A few minutes passed like that, and it didn’t take long before the pricks actually hurt. Hamsah was completely silent, and seemed content to stay that way. He was bent over Dante, every movement precise as he drew the basic outline, only pausing to push his hair back. Dante hated the silence.

“Hamsah?” Dante asked softly.

“What?”

“I know that you don’t want to have a conversation, but… can I talk  _ at  _ you, at least?”

Hamsah paused and glared at him, hand tightening on the needle.

“I know that you don’t have a reason to forgive me for what I did, but…” Dante sighed. “You, Kain, and Astatine meant a lot to me. I’m disgusted by who I was and what I did, and the only thing that hurts worse than seeing what I’ve done is knowing that there’s no way to make it right. But the least I can do is apologize.”

Hamsah stared at him, and the glare flickered between anger and another emotion that Dante couldn’t quite place. Eventually, he turned back to the work at hand. One of the jabs drew blood, which made Dante bite down on his tongue and Hamsah swear softly.

“If I could go back, I hope you know that I wouldn’t make the same decision.”

“I don’t hate you, Dante Hill,” Hamsah responded. His voice was tight.

“It’s okay if you do.”

“Well, I  _ don’t, _ ” Hamsah snapped. He swallowed thickly. “You… were a bastard for what you did. But it was against soldiers, and— and  _ I’ve _ —” he clenched his jaw for a few moments. Dante held his breath. “Nevermind.”

“You’ve gone on missions for Talon,” Dante said softly. “You’ve killed soldiers.”

“Vipers call it hunting,” he said. “We’re not killers, we’re not assassins, we— they…  _ they _ just hunt things.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t hate you. I wish I did. It would make things much easier for me.”

“Then what do you feel?”

“I am... afraid, I think. Of you.”

Something seemed to freeze around them. “ _ What? _ ”

“I look at you, and I see someone who was perfectly okay with killing, who wanted to impress his trainers, and threw himself into Talon because he was scared of the other option. I see…” he paused, and for a second, Dante saw a flicker of a pained smile. It dropped as quickly as it appeared. “I see myself. What I was. What I... am.”

“Hamsah…” Dante whispered. “You’re not like me. You  _ left. _ ”

“Not in time,” he whispered. “I— I met Cobalt, you know, during my assimilation. He approached me and offered me freedom. And I reported him. Didn’t see him again until I broke into one of his safehouses. I nearly killed Astatine before I realized that I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t...  _ strong _ enough to do it. Not good enough. First solo mission, and I went rogue to escape the responsibility.” He shook his head softly. “The failure still stings, you know. In the back of my mind, I’m disappointed that after all my training, I couldn’t follow through.”

Dante swallowed, looking at his hands. He thought about Mr. Smith, how he taught him how to stand and speak  _ just so,  _ and realized how disappointed he would be if he could see his precious student now.

“You see me and you see everything you hate about who you were.”

Hamsah didn’t respond to that, narrowing his eyes as he worked. Dante tried to focus on that. His skin felt raw and irritated, and every prick only made the feeling worse, even if it wasn’t drawing blood. But it was coming along— the outline of the main body was done, even if the lines weren’t filled in all the way. It was well done, every point precise on his skin. Dante was impressed.

“So… when did you learn how to draw?”

“A few weeks after I learned to shift. Stop twitching.”

“Considering that you keep stabbing me—”

“You asked to be stabbed,” Hamsah pulled Dante’s arm closer and braced it on his knee. Dante winced as the wings of the dragonfly began to take shape. How the hell did Hamsah sit through getting one on his head?

“How long did your first tattoo take?”

“Three hours. We took a break halfway through, though, so it was only a two and a half hours of work. This shouldn’t take that long,” Hamsah responded, blowing a strand of hair out of his face.

Dante bit the inside of his cheek as Hamsah continued to work. The feeling in his arm reminded him more and more of that one time he stepped on a bee when he was nine. Except if someone had spilled rubbing alcohol on it right afterwards instead of removing the stinger. It wasn’t going to be a fun healing process, but hopefully it would pass quickly.

“You’re a genuinely good person, Hamsah. No matter what you did when you were in the program or how you feel about your mission. If you weren’t a good person, you would’ve stayed. You wouldn’t have cared.”

“And where does that put you?” Hamsah enunciated the question with a sharp jab, but Dante contained the flinch. “Bet  _ you _ killed more people for Talon than I did.”

“I never pretended to be a good person,” Dante whispered. There was a long pause, where Dante clenched his jaw and tried to figure out what to say. “Sixty-eight.”

Hamsah looked up from his work.

“If you were wondering. Forty-two civilians, five dragons, and twenty-one soldiers. I may have been amoral in Talon, but I was accountable. I kept track.”

Hamsah was staring at him. Dante looked at the ground and resisted the urge to pull his arm away. He knew the numbers. He had never said them out loud. Sixty-eight deaths on his hands that he couldn’t fix. He never could.

“It’s a lot of people to carry,” Hamsah whispered. Dante nodded. “You carry it well.”

“So do you,” Dante said, because he  _ did _ . Hamsah didn’t say anything. “Does Astatine know?”

“No. No. We haven’t known each other quite…” Hamsah swallowed. “I’m grateful for her. You have no idea how much she’s done for me, I can’t express it in words. She knows the underground better than I ever will, and she’s a genuinely good person. But she’s only fifteen, and in the end, I’ve only been out for seven months.” 

Dante felt something in his jaw go slightly slack. Seven months. That was right before Dante left for Crescent Beach. 

Hamsah gave a mirthless smile. “I know. I don’t act like it. I still remember the day when Cobalt and Wes left to recruit you, you know. They told me that if Astatine dropped off the map they’d hunt me down and cut my head off. I’m... not ready to tell her. Or anyone who doesn’t have the same blood on their hands.” He swallowed thickly and turned back to the tattoo. The wings were taking shape, beautiful and sharp at the same time. “Maybe that’s why I liked you. Murderer attracts murderer.”

“You were trying to be kind,” Dante said. “You  _ were  _ being kind. Even if I didn’t deserve it. I’m…” he took a breath. “I’m grateful for what you did. Eternally. And I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to forgive you, Dante Hill.”

“You... don’t have to.” He nearly choked on the words. He wasn’t entitled to forgiveness, no matter what he did to try to make up for what he had done. That didn’t mean he didn’t want it. He wanted this friendship back. Desperately.

“But if Cobalt hadn’t given  _ me _ another chance… I’d be dead. Or worse. I’d still be working for…” Hamsah ground his teeth. “And I still hate the fact that I have to fight her. I feel like I owe her something. She made me everything I am, and I have to fight her, and that means that she has to die or I have to die and there isn’t a third option.”

“Your trainer?”

“Yeah.”

Dante clenched his jaw. He already knew which Viper Hamsah trained under. Neither of them needed to say it aloud to make it obvious.

“Does Cobalt know?”

“Probably,” Hamsah shrugged. “We’ve haven’t had the talk, but our fighting style is a little too distinct for me to have trained under anyone else, and I’m pretty sure that Wes dredged up my case file at one point. I don’t like thinking about it too much, and he’s never made me say it out loud. I think… I think he understands what it’s like. Everyone who worked in Talon has skeletons in their closet.”

“Everyone,” Dante repeated. Hamsah started filling in the lines of the body until Dante couldn’t see the skin under the ink. He opened his mouth a few times, trying to find a way to continue the conversation, but it always felt flat. The silence was interrupted only by the pain of the needle, reclaiming his body as his own, prick by prick.

It was beautiful. Parts of the wings looked nearly geometric in their shape, a bit sharper than an actual dragonfly. Like a stained glass rendering, dark against his skin.  _ His  _ skin. His body. No one else's. 

Hamsah taped a gauze bandage over it. “Take it off after twenty-hour hours, wash it with soap every few hours for the next week or so. Do  _ not  _ scratch at it. Cobalt’s going to yell at you the moment he figures it out, but he’ll give you what you need to keep it from getting infected if you need it.” He grimaced slightly as he helped Dante stand. “He’ll yell at me, too. This was impulsive.”

“It was worth it.”

“Stabbing you  _ was _ therapeutic.”

Dante managed a weak smile at that. “Then we both got what we wanted.” He took a breath. “Hamsah.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think you should worry about who you were, or who you would’ve been. I’ve seen who you are now, and… I like who you are. You’re a good person. I don’t think you’d try so hard to be a good person if you weren’t one at heart. And I’m sorry that you see things that you don’t like in me. I just hope that, eventually, you don’t see them in yourself. Because I sure as hell don't see them in you.” Dante swallowed thickly. “That’s all I wanted to say. You can leave now and pretend this never happened, if you want. I’ll clean up.”

Hamsah closed his eyes, clenching his jaw hard. Then he closed the distance between them and hugged him. Dante stiffened. It was tight, putting a not-quite-painful pressure on his ribs and his back, and he only had half a second to register it before it was gone, and Hamsah walked out the door.

Dante didn’t follow.

This was more than enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I construct this entire arc with the goal of traumatizing 60% of the main characters and getting Dante a cool tattoo? Yes. Yes I did.
> 
> You're welcome.


	9. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was right. This is under 1,000 words.

_ Insufferable. _

The dragon narrowed her eyes into slits as she looked down the mountain, to the temple below her. She knew the people inside. Five surviving members of the Elder Council, all upwards of five hundred. Two more Shen-Lungs— The only survivors of the ancient bloodline of Xuan. And then the Americans: Cobalt, Hamsah, Ember Hill, Dante Hill, and the human soldier, who were throwing quite a wrench in her operation.

Somewhere inside that building was a census that would bring down all of China, but sneaking in and stealing it without violence appeared to be absolutely impossible ever since they arrived. Someone was always awake, keeping careful watch, and she wasn’t stupid enough to try to go toe to toe with an elder Shen-Lung. Even with her level of experience, taking down Xuan Zhinu was a carefully planned operation that depended on the element of surprise. Taking down the other five members of the Elder Council when they were looking for her wasn’t possible. There was a reason they planned to blow this temple to kingdom come rather than engaging. 

She had to wait until she knew exactly where they were keeping the census. She doubted it was still in the vault that Zhinu had told her about during their  _ conversation _ . But she could wait. She knew she could wait. Eventually, everyone made a mistake. It was just a matter of exploiting it when it was made.

Cobalt taught her that, she remembered. His words exactly, a cocky grin on his face, his fingers on the trigger of a rifle. 

Cobalt, who was currently somewhere in that temple, making her life endlessly complicated. The two missions she had failed in her entire life were because of him trying to be a  _ better person. _ A merciful leader, as if he hadn’t spent years as a Basilisk, getting to a position in five years that took most dragons ten. No one could rise through the system that quickly without being ruthless. He wasn’t allowed to turn his back on his past and make  _ her  _ suffer for it. At least  _ she  _ owned up to what she had done.

Her mission may be to destroy any possibility of a Chinese resistance, but if she could kill Cobalt while she was there, it would be justice served.

Her phone buzzed. Without looking away from the scene, she reached into her pocket and put it to her ear.

“Seraphina,” she said softly. “Report.”

“ _ Two more names on my list, and Shanghai will be clear, _ ” she replied, a sneer evident in her voice. The dragon twitched. Seraphina rubbed everyone the wrong way. She distinctly remembered that Lilith had disliked her, when she was alive; whether it was over her methods of killing or a more personal reason was never discussed. But Seraphina was good at what she did. That was all that mattered.

“Good,” she replied. “Do they suspect anything?”

“ _ They’re oblivious. _ ”

“And the humans?”

“ _ Idiots. _ ”

“I’m glad to hear some things don’t change.” Her lips twisted into a sharp smile. “Riddle me this, Seraphina. If you’re looking for a slip of paper in a temple, and you can’t afford to stay for long without risk of a painful and undignified death, where do you look?”

“ _ That’s obvious, _ ” Seraphina laughed, almost to herself.

“Is it really?”

“ _ Yes. You may be the best in your generation, but you still can stand to learn some things from your elders… Lilith would know what to do.” _

“She would. But I specialize in soldiers, not dragons. That’s why I’m asking you for the…  _ obvious  _ answer.”

“ _ Ask, and you shall receive,”  _ Seraphina responded. _ “You look to the place they protect when disaster strikes. _ ”

Static echoed in her ear.

“ _ Good luck, Stealth. _ ”


	10. Dante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bad news: Corona Virus is a thing, and my lungs aren't stellar as it is.  
Good news: Quarantine gives me copious amounts of free time in which I can a) edit, and b) work on the next installment (speaking of which: I finished the first draft, yaaay!)

It took four days of planning and recovery before it was decided: They were going to Shanghai.

Not all of them. Not all Europeans. Riley, Ember, and Hamsah, as well as Shen Nianzu were going. Dante, Garret, and Jade were staying here. Dante for obvious reasons. Garret because he was a human. Jade wanted to stay close to her brother.

Mr. Shen’s job was to evacuate Shanghai of any survivors to Hong Kong and make sure they could keep in close contact with the Elder Council. Everyone else would be in charge of finding the Viper— Seraphina, who was a full adult and had been an accomplished killer for centuries— and killing her with minimal damage to the city of Shanghai. 

Dante knew it would be useless, but he wanted to go with them.

“They’ll be okay, you know.”

Dante looked over his shoulder, and Xinguang twitched, even though he didn’t turn around. Garret Xavier Sebastian stood behind them, leaning against the doorway. He was shivering worse than Dante was.

“I could’ve seen them to the path with you,” Dante said. “I’m not  _ that  _ disabled.”

“It’s also snowing. The cold and wet make old injuries harder to manage,” Xinguang said. He didn’t look up from his project— carving a piece of wood into... something. He appeared calm and collected while he did it. Dante knew better. He was bored, anxious, or both. 

Jade had gone into a conference with the Elder Council in the morning and hadn’t come out since. He hadn’t stopped carving.

“I don’t see what quarantining me here will do about it.”

“This room has a fireplace,” Garret pointed out. Dante glared at him. “Just saying. It’s nice, for a guest room.”

“That’s why it’s mine and Yuu’s,” Xinguang smirked slightly. “I have trust in your friends. Nianzu will be able to get everyone to safety, and they will either be able to kill this  _ Seraphina  _ or get enough information to tell the Elder Council what is needed to kill her.”

“She’s a three-hundred-year-old Viper,” Dante said.

“Considering that Mist killed Lilith with a pistol, I think they’re going to be okay.” Garret didn’t meet Dante’s eyes when he said it, so Dante decided it was unnecessary to remind him that Tristan nearly died before Mist could land a shot. “We’ve done a lot of risky BS in the past few months. This is nothing.”

Dante swallowed and nodded, rubbing his forearm in an attempt to hide his nerves. The tattoo bandages had come off last night, but it still itched like hell. He was used to the aching and occasional sharp pain of his back, but this was different. It was less debilitating and more  _ annoying.  _

“It’s pretty,” Garret nodded to it, a hint of a smile on his face. Dante resisted the urge to cover it. No point trying to pretend that he didn’t break the no-tattoo rule, so no point in acting like he regretted it. “I’m guessing it’s Hamsah’s work?”

“Yeah. He’s a really good artist. Cobalt’s going to be pissed, though.”

“Probably, but not for too long,” Garret said. “Do you think it’s worth it?”

Dante nodded. “I really wanted this.”

“Good,” Garret nodded. Dante leaned back in the chair and tilted his head towards the ceiling. He didn’t regret it, even though part of him thought that he should. People weren’t allowed to get tattoos in Talon. But he liked it. It was pretty. It was  _ his _ .

“You’re allowed to come into the room, Mao,” Xinguang said dryly. “You don’t have to stand in the doorway. I don’t bite.”

Dante let the front legs of his chair fall back to the ground. Garet sat at the foot of Jade’s bed. He was shivering, even with the crackling fire in front of him. Xinguang and Jade’s room  _ was  _ the nicer one, but both Dante and Garret still had lived their lives in the desert. It was cold in the mountains.

“So, do you know if you and Jade are leaving for the… Namain Clan?” Garret asked.

“Naiman,” Xinguang corrected. “We have not decided. It’s what she and the Elders are talking about now, I believe. It’s true that it would be easier to hide in plain sight with them, but if there’s a risk of someone tracking us, it’s not a journey to be taken lightly. I’m not a fighter like Yuu is.” The knife in his hand slipped, and he muttered something in a language Dante couldn’t understand.

“Why aren’t you with them?” Dante asked. “It seems like an important decision.”

“Mr. Lei was saying things that… I didn’t like. I didn’t want to cause a scene,” he muttered. “Yuu is considered the— the  _ wild  _ sibling, the... the… anyway. But we share a bit of— of anger in the defense of others. The Naiman Clan is a good people. They’re strong, respectful, and their way of life works well for them. But Mr. Lei… does not like Mongols. As a whole. There’s a bad history.”

Dante furrowed his brow. “Does that  _ distaste _ extend to you?”

“Sometimes. Dragons leave home when we are of age, so our— our…” he paused in his carving, nose scrunching as he thought. “Chinese can mean Han, Zhuang, Tibetan, Yi, Mongol… others. But those are all very human. My mother followed much of the Han practices, but she’s a Shen-Lung, so she wasn’t  _ Han.  _ When I became an adult, I went to Mongolia. I know their practices. So I’m not Mongul, but when I  _ act  _ Mongul…” He shrugged. Dante winced. “What is it like in America?”

“Talon doesn’t let us have culture outside of Talon, so it’s a moot point. You’re either part of Talon, a rogue, or a Shen-Lung,” Dante said. “Sorry about Mr. Lei.”

“It was never a big problem. He is the only one in the Elder Council who I don’t get along with,” he said. “Jade is simply better with those interactions.”

The three of them descended into a stiff silence. Dante propped his chin on his hands as he watched the other two. Xinguang went back to his project. The way he carried himself around Jade and the Elder Council, Dante would think that he was at least within fifty years of Jade’s age, but seeing him sit cross-legged on the floor, chewing on his lip as he struggled to whittle, it was easier to remember that he was still young by draconic standards. Garret was staring out the window, tapping his fingers on his leg. It didn’t take a genius to know that he wasn’t looking forward to the days ahead of them, where all he could do was wait, plan, and try to convince the Elder Council that St. George had changed.

At least they weren’t alone. It would be a good opportunity to get to know one another.

“So… you and Ember, huh?” Dante decided to break the silence between them. Garret looked away from the window, eyebrows raised. “I’m not going to give you any threats. I know I wouldn’t be able to follow through, so don’t give me that look. She’s capable of defending her own honor. And you’re… impressively righteous. It’s like you’re made for each other, or something. But forgive me if I’m concerned. It’s my  _ job  _ to be concerned.”

“Is this really the time?” Garret asked.

“We don’t have anything better to do,” Dante asked. “Though if Xinguang wants us out of his room—”

“No, this sounds interesting.”

Garret rolled his eyes. “Well, if we’re going to have this conversation here, in China, while your sister and my girlfriend is preparing to go to  _ Shanghai…  _ if you have any questions, feel free to ask.”

Dante narrowed his eyes. “Did you actually love her in Crescent Beach, or was it a con?”

“I wouldn’t have dated her if I weren’t at least  _ somewhat  _ interested, even if I needed to be close to her for the mission. And I did love her by the end.”

“Really? How long did ‘ _ by the end’ _ take?”

“Um… first date. We went to a carnival.”

“Do you think that she’s some kind of exception to dragon kind as a whole?”

“No.”

“Does her parentage give you reservations?”

“For the first five minutes that I figured it out, but I got over it.”

“If Ember and Tristan were both drowning, who would you save?”

“ _ Seriously? _ That’s not fair.”

“Answer the question.”

“Ember’s an amazing swimmer and Tristan has a TBI, so Tristan.”

“If she had fallen in love with Riley instead, would you still be her friend?”

“Yes, if they wanted me to stay.”

“Do you really love her?”

Something in Garret’s expression softened. “Yeah. I really do.” He smiled. “Do I pass your test?”

“You are… satisfactory.” Dante smirked.

Garret laughed, shaking his head. In the soft light, Dante  _ could  _ see why Ember loved him. He was genuine in his emotions— a far cry from the lies they had lived in Talon. 

A far cry from Dante.

“I wish I had been there when—”

A resonating crash shook the entire building, throwing Dante off his chair and to the ground. Dust rained down from the ceiling, and there was a loud,  _ terrifying  _ bellow from somewhere outside before there was another crash. 

There was a sharp scream. Dante jolted and scrambled to his feet. The floor was covered in dust. Something had just  _ slammed  _ into this temple. There was another scream. Another  _ dragon  _ had just slammed into this temple. And Dante recognized that cry.

It was a vessel. He was sure of it.

“Are you okay?” Xinguang asked, already on his feet. He looked shaken, but uninjured, even as the building shook again.

“I’m fine, but we need to get below ground before we get smashed to grease stains,” Dante said. Xinguang opened his mouth, his expression set and determined, but Dante interrupted. “Xinguang. There’s at least one adult vessel laying rampage to this temple. Garret’s a human, you said you aren’t a fighter, and I’m  _ me,  _ and we’re surrounded by five of the oldest dragons in China. We need to—”

There was another roar and a crash. A defiant scream echoed it. Dante flinched, looking desperately around their room. This entire temple could come down on their heads if they weren’t careful. When he ground his teeth and approached the window, he could see several of the courtyard trees on fire, and an ALPHA-strain vessel near the entrance of the temple, engaged with two Eastern dragons. 

Dante’s breath caught. It was one thing to see those things being built. It was one thing to command them. It was entirely different to see it going head to head with two  _ Elder dragons  _ and hold its ground.

Why now? The Vipers had a  _ plan.  _ Finish their initial list of names, steal the census, cause a panic, kill everyone in an—

_ Steal the census. _

“Shit, they’re after the census,” Dante said. Garret’s eyes widened. “It’s okay. It’s okay, they don’t know where it is. We need to move to a more stable location that won’t kill us if the building collapses.”

“This is the  _ Lung Miao,”  _ Xinguang snapped. “It’s designed to withstand a siege, and I can’t just— just  _ hide  _ when—”

“Dante’s right, now is not the time to be heroic.”

“I can’t just…” Xinguang said. He spared a glance out the window, wringing his hands. “I don’t know where Yuu is doing, and if she does anything stupid…”

“Then she’ll have backup. I won’t pretend to know your sister as well as you do, but she knows how to handle herself. She’s gone up against one of these things before,” Garret said.

“She did  _ what? _ ”

“Yeah. And she turned out fine! Let’s go away from the window!”

Xinguang growled, grabbing a bow from his bedside before leading them out the door. The temple  _ was  _ holding steady, even with the screams of battle outside, but Dante still felt trapped as they walked. Garret kept his pistol in his hand as they turned down corridors, further into the temple, away from the battle that they would win. As good as an ALPHA vessel was at what it did, no matter how much damage it could do before it died, it was up against five Elders and probably Jade.

Definitely a distraction. 

It still came as a shock when the three of them rounded a corner and nearly  _ ran into  _ a vessel. A hatchling in human form, silent as it walked down the halls. It snapped to attention when they came in its sights, shifting and pouncing at them in one, fluid movement without making a sound. Dante grabbed Xinguang’s wrist and pulled him back from the vessel’s jaws, repressing every instinct to shift and defend himself. Garret shoved them both out of the way and fired twice, swore, and pulled a steel knife from his belt.

“Get Xinguang out of here, I can—” Garret ducked out of an attack and fired again to no avail— “take care of this.  _ Go! _ ”

“We’re not just—” 

Xinguang grabbed Dante’s shirt collar and dragged him away, keeping his eyes on the fight in front of them. The Vessel was fast, but Garret was a dragon killer and knew his way around a knife and pistol. He managed to avoid its jaws and flame, but not the claws. The Vessel could avoid any attacks to vitals, but didn’t manage to avoid when Garret sunk the knife into its wing membrane and  _ tore. _

“We can’t  _ leave  _ him!” Dante hissed, regaining his footing as Xinguang halted.

“We  _ aren’t, _ ” Xinguang hissed. He pulled an arrow from the quiver slung over his shoulder, sighted on his bow, and fired. It sunk into the vessel’s armored neck, drawing its attention from Garret. Xinguang drew again and fired.

The vessel crumpled. The arrow had gone right through its eye.

There was a silence between them.

“Not a fighter?” Garret asked dryly. He was bleeding from a gash in his arm, but looked more annoyed than anything else.

“Archery is a cultural practice,” Xinguang responded. “I don’t like using it to kill.”

“Yeah, but you seem to be  _ plenty  _ good at it!”

“I’m seventy-six. I’m good at a lot of things. Close combat isn’t one of them.”

Garret stared at him, disbelieving. Dante cautiously approached the Vessel, a chill coming over him. Its identifying tattoo wasn’t visible in human form, so he couldn’t begin to figure out when it was made or where it was trained. There was a camera hooked around its horn, which meant that it was likely a scout, sent in to locate the census so Stealth could steal it under a preferred circumstance. Or perhaps steal it itself.

Knowing what Dante had been told about his heritage, it was eerie to look at it. Its scales were different than his, as were its eyes, but there were little things that Dante could notice, now. The small build, despite the fact that they were programmed to be sixteen to seventeen by the time they were able to function. That could just be a coincidence, but the crooked left horn was unmistakably shared. Ember had always teased him about it, when they were younger. 

How much of him was DNA from the Elder Wyrm, and how much of him was something  _ else? _

“Dante.”

Dante jolted and looked away from the dead Vessel. Garrett and Xinguang were both staring at him.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just… weird, being on the other side of these things,” Dante responded with a grimace and a shug. Garret winced as they descended into another silence.

A  _ complete  _ silence. No shaking in the ground. No cries of battle.

“Sounds like the fighting is over,” Dante said softly. “We should find your sister.”

Xinguang straightened and gave a nod, shouldering his bow. Dante followed wordlessly and tried his best to forget the vessel they had just killed. There wasn’t anything special about it.

They found Jade outside her guest room, wearing a billowing robe that seemed to be hastily tied around her waist. Her long hair was loose and tangled, and she sported a long scrape across her face that was still bleeding heavily. She immediately relaxed when she saw them, approaching Xinguang and holding him at arm’s length. They spoke together in Mandarin, seemingly unaware or uncaring of onlookers. Xinguang appeared… nearly  _ angry  _ as he spoke, his tone sharp and quick. Jade gave an exasperated hiss. There was a tense pause.

Then Xinguang stepped forward and  _ hugged  _ her.

_ Well, Vessel attacks must bring out priorities. _

Garret cleared his throat slightly and opened his mouth, only for Jade to break away from Xinguang and embrace Garret tightly.

“Thank you for keeping my brother out of danger,” she whispered. “I never would’ve forgiven myself if he had gotten killed.”

“If  _ I  _ had gotten myself killed?” Xinguang pulled Jade away from Garret. “ _ You  _ were the one fighting a— a—” he hissed something in Mandarin. Dante doubted it had a nice translation. “And your— your  _ new friend  _ said you’ve done this before. You could have died!”

“I wouldn’t,” Jade shook her head. “I know how to fight. I am  _ good  _ at fighting.” She gave a small smile. “At last, my rebel ways are helpful.”

“You could have…” Xinguang took a deep breath and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Don’t  _ ever  _ do that again! Reckless! Impulsive! There is not a single word to describe!  _ This  _ is why you’re a family disappointment! If you died—”

“I didn’t.”

“Fuck yourself!”

There was a silence. Jade didn’t react, ever stoic, which was impressive— Dante didn’t know much about Mandarin, but he did know it was a generally more polite language than English. He doubted  _ ‘fuck yourself’  _ had a direct translation. That was probably why Xinguang used it in the first place.

“There are some injuries, but none are serious. We’re still on alert. Lianhua is searching the surrounding land and advised that, until her return, we keep the windows boarded,” Jade directed her attention to Garret. Xinguang crossed his arms and glared at both of them. Dante didn’t miss the way he wiped his eyes. “I assume one of you can inform Cobalt of what happened? He might have thoughts.”

“They were after the census. This was meant to be a distraction,” Dante said. “I’m positive. We encountered a Vessel while going to a safer area of the temple that was likely trying to scout. We killed it— Garret and Xinguang killed it— but there may be others.”

“You did  _ what? _ ” Jade looked at Xinguang.

“I shot a dragon with a bow.”

“You engaged a—”

Xinguang yelled something in Mandarin. Dante guessed that it was a loud reminder that Jade had just fought an ALPHA-strain Vessel.

“We are aware of the probable intention behind this attack,” Jade turned back to Dante. “Someone is searching the temple now to make sure that Stealth isn’t around. Until then,  _ you  _ are staying in our room with the windows boarded.” The last sentence was spoken to Xinguang.

“They don’t know I have it,” he objected.

“We don’t know what they know.”

“You stay with me, then.” Xinguang said. His hands were clenched tightly, but Dante saw the twitch in his muscles that told him that Xinguang was fighting the urge to either throw them up in the air or try to assault his sister. “Stop being  _ stupid,  _ Yuu. We can’t… if you die, I don’t have anyone left.  _ And  _ the Xuan line dies. So stop being...”

That was about the time that Dante grabbed Garret by the arm and walked them both into Dante’s room. There were some things between family that others weren’t meant to see. 

And if Xinguang did end up assaulting Jade, he wanted to be in another room when it happened.

“How are you feeling?” Garret asked as they stepped into Dante’s room. He wasted no time in closing the window shutters and finding the phone on Ember’s bedside. “I know it’s not your first near-death experience, but…” he shrugged. “Welcome to the other side of a Vessel attack.”

Dante snorted. “I didn’t do as good a job at killing the operation as I thought I did.”

Garret raised his eyebrows.

“That was an ALPHA Vessel. The fact that they used one as a  _ distraction  _ means that there are more in reserve. And it’s harder to bury them under a mountain when they’re awake. And here  _ we  _ are, strapped for information and resources, going against a  _ multinational  _ organization that owns politicians and billionaires. We don’t have beds for half of the people in the underground,” Dante said. “I just… hope this is enough, someday.”

Garret nodded. “Don’t blame yourself for not completely destroying the vessel program. It was practically guaranteed that some of the already-awakened would survive. It’s impressive enough that you took out most of it.”

Dante decided not to point out that he also helped make it. Garret already knew that. Garret had paid for Dante’s bad decisions. Garret was trying to make him feel better. He needed to take encouragement where he could get it. 

“I had help,” Dante said in lieu of his real thoughts. He didn’t mention names. It would be redundant. He had help in the labs. He had help in seeing Talon for what it was. He had help sitting up and breathing, those first few days. He had  _ never  _ had so much help. He had never been so supported.

He had never felt so vulnerable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xinguang now comes with lore.


	11. Ember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update took over a week despite corona simply because I have no idea what to do with it. So here. Have this offering.

Seraphina, turned out, was more accomplished than Hyaeni. 

_ “Remember when you mocked Ember over getting third degree burns? _ ”

“Shut  _ up,  _ Wes.”

Ember tried not to growl as Riley squirmed. He had a third degree burn over most of his arms and chest, second degree burns on his face, and he was still refusing to sit still as she and Hamsah tried to listen to Wes’ instructions and use what little resources they had. The Archivist had not given them supplies to deal with burns. Probably because dragons weren’t supposed to have to  _ worry  _ about burns.

“Look. No one was expecting for her to have molotov cocktail’d her entire hotel room. It’s not Riley’s fault that he got set on fire,” Hamsah said. “And it’s not like this is the worst thing that could’ve happened.”

“She’s still out there,” Riley said. He seemed to give up in his struggle and let his head hit the floor with a dull  _ thud. _

“Yeah, but it’s harder to kill dragons when you have your knee shot out,” Ember said. She tapped another bandage down over Riley’s arm. There was a certain rythm that they had fallen into. Cut off any blackened skin with the pocket knife not designed for the task. Apply cool water to the burn even though they had no good way to keep the water consistently clean. Apply burn salve that Ember had stolen from the nearest drug store. Wrap the wound. Try to ignore Riley’s squirming as he had to deal with two teenagers who didn’t know what they were doing.

Serephina must have expected them. She  _ had  _ to be. Why else would the entire apartment be doused in what was apparently called  _ draconic napalm,  _ according to Riley.

_ “This is why I don’t like you being halfway across the world,”  _ Wes said.  _ “We’re never having safehouses overseas, understood? It’s asking for death. _ ”

“Sure. Can I put my legs down?”

“ _ No. _ ” That was from Ember, Hamsah, and Wes, all at approximately the same time.

“ _ Fine. _ ” Riley hit his head on the floor again. “Can we talk strategy, then? Something to distract me from the… worryingly not-painful burns. I have nerve damage, don’t I?” 

“Don’t worry about it.  _ My _ nerves were fine. According to Shen, the evacuation was successful,” Ember said. She took Riley’s hand and wrapped it to the wrist. He wiggled his fingers, just to prove that he could. “There weren’t many people left to evacuate. They’ve been relocated to Hong Kong. So the only dragons in Shanghai should be us four and a sadistic Viper who’s older than everyone in this room put together. Good news: I shot her.”

“You’ve mentioned that.”

“I’m proud of it,” Ember said. It wasn’t easy to aim a pistol at a moving target in a burning hotel room. Riley wasn’t the only one with burns. He was just the one who had a molotov cocktail thrown directly at his chest.

“So now Seraphina is somewhere in Shanghai with a limp,” Hamsah said. “There’s more good news.”

“And what is that?”

“She has red-toned skin and light hair, so she stands out just as much as we do,” Hamsah said. “And as long as she’s in Shanghai, she can’t shift. Bad news remains: She’s three hundred. Helped found the Viper program. Sadist.”

“Do you have a personal vendetta against Seraphina, or something?” Riley groaned.

“No,” Hamsah snapped, a bit too quickly to be believable. “She just makes me... uncomfortable. And I’m not the only one.  _ No one  _ in the program likes her. Lilith took joy in her work, but she wouldn’t douse a hotel in lighter fluid just because it’s a more painful way to die than a much-more-efficient bullet to the head.” He gave a huff and looked at the TV. Ember couldn’t understand a word, but it kept showing video of a burning building. “Fires are spreading through the Jing’an and Hongkou districts, if either of you were wondering. She certainly made quite a distraction. I guess molotovs are useful for something.”

“You can  _ read  _ Mandarin, too?” Ember asked.

“Which district are we in, again?” Riley asked the more relevant question. He tried to prop himself on his elbows only for Ember to slam him back onto the floor. He hissed.

“I can’t read Mandarin, but they’re announcing it verbally, and I have context clues,” he said. “We’re in the Jiading district. We should be safe. Unless Seraphina decides to stop by. What do we do if these get infected?”

“ _ You break into a veternary’s practice and steal ceftriaxone,”  _ Wes said.  _ “It’s not hard. Even I can do it.” _

“Okay. So… Riley’s down until further notice. Shen’s in Hong Kong until he gets everyone settled and makes sure there aren’t any Vipers  _ there _ . Heaven help us if there are. That leaves us two and Wes’ hacking skills to kill Seraphina,” Hamsah said.

“You two are  _ not  _ going up against Seraphina by yourselves,” Riley said.

“We’re both Vipers. We have the same training as she does,” Ember said, mostly for argument’s sake. She wasn’t actually keen to see Seraphina again, and Hamsah didn’t look to be, either. “You were the one who said that the best way to deal with Vipers is to send Vipers.”

“That doesn’t apply when you’re combined ages don’t reach thirty-five. She’s  _ three hundred.  _ She survived St. George’s massacre of the 1800s. Do you ever wonder why so many Vipers are young? It’s because she and Lilith were the  _ only  _ surviving Vipers of that fiasco. We’ll regroup with Shen and go from there; we were just supposed to track her down, anyway. Wes, don’t you dare help them find her. ”

_ “You don’t have nearly enough faith in me if you think I would. _ ”

Hamsah and Ember exchanged a look. Hamsah rolled his eyes. It made her feel slightly more vindicated.

The phone rang.

Ember snatched it before anyone else could. It was Jade’s number, which meant it was safe to answer. With a look from Riley, she put it on speaker.

“You’re on speaker. And on conference call with Wes,” Ember said in lieu of a greeting.

“ _ Why do you need Wes on call? _ ” It was Garret’s voice that came through, not Jade’s, and the paranoia was audible. The paranoia was also justified.  _ “Is anyone hurt? _ ”

“You would not  _ believe  _ the day we’ve had, it has  _ sucked,  _ but no one is dead. Or fatally injured. Riley’s now forbidden from mocking me about that time that I set myself on fire. How are you?.”

_ “Did— Did Riley set himself on fire?”  _ Garret asked.

“I  _ was set  _ on fire. There’s a big difference,” Riley said. “Can I  _ please  _ put my legs down?”

_ “If you do that I will make your life a living hell when you get back home. You’re already in shock. Elevating your legs will keep it from getting worse,”  _ Wes snapped.  _ “Ember, if he tries to put his legs down, smack him. _ ”

“You’re the  _ worst  _ medic.” Riley’s voice was bordering on a whine.

_ “I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you. _ ”

“Why are you calling us, Garret? Is there news?” Ember asked. “And why do you have Jade’s phone?”

_ “This has moved from Jade’s phone to the phone of whoever’s closest to it. She’s with Xinguang right now, _ ” Garret said. “ _ We’re all safe, too, before you start freaking out about what I’m about to say. None of us are dead, none of us got… set on fire. We’re doing better than you are, apparently.”  _ There was a pause. Everyone was looking at the phone.  _ “There was a Vessel attack on the temple. One of the ALPHA strains and a few more of the normal vessels. We’re fine. There weren’t any major injuries. The census is safe.”  _ There was another pause. “ _ Dante thinks it was supposed to be a distraction. I agree, frankly. If the census had been where it’s supposed to be instead of on one of us, it would have given a Viper enough time to steal it.” _

“Shit,” Riley muttered.

“Shit,” Ember agreed.

“This could actually be considered a good thing,” Hamsah said. Ember furrowed her brow at him. “Staging a vessel attack is one of the least-subtle things you can do. This wasn’t part of the plan. They’re getting nervous.” He continued. He grimaced. “So good news: we’re throwing a wrench in their plans. Bad news…”

“Hell hath no fury like an inconvenienced Viper,” Riley finished. “And that also means that Stealth is probably somewhere nearby.”

_ “Yeah, we gathered,”  _ Garret said. He gave a sigh that was heavy enough to be audible over the phone.  _ “I don’t like holing myself up in this temple.” _

“She’d tear you to pieces if you went looking for her,” Riley said. He tried to take his legs off the chair and prop himself on his elbows. Ember smacked him on the forehead. “ _ Ow.  _ Stay inside. Look after the more vulnerable people. Any humans that are still there are easy prey, and they’re fairly easy to get information out of. Do you know what the Elder Council is planning?”

“ _ Dante’s talking with them right now. Last time they came out, he said that they had taken leaving the temple off the table. They’d be too exposed, and Stealth could just follow us to wherever we go. But… they’re thinking about telling other Shen-Lungs to evacuate. Probably to Taiwan. The census will be useless if they’ve left their temples.” _

“Smart,” Riley muttered. “Tell them that we have safehouses in America, too. Wes, can we accommodate—”

_ “I’ve been working on them for two months, Riley. There are eight safehouses that Talon doesn’t know about, and I’ll talk to the Order about using some of theirs, as well. At least temporarily.” _

“You’ll do that?” Riley asked.

_ “Don’t act too shocked, _ ” came the dry reply.  _ “We’ll get everything set up on our end. But let’s hope it won’t come to that, okay? _ ”

“Yeah… we have to at  _ least  _ take down Seraphina,” Riley said. He let out a low groan. “I… was  _ not  _ expecting this. Did you catch everything Wes said, St. George?”

“ _ Yeah. I’ll relay it to Dante. It might make things so smoother over here. Thanks.” _

“Anytime,” Ember said.

_ “Love you. Sebastian, out.” _

The phone clicked off. Ember closed her eyes. The temple had been attacked by a  _ Vessel.  _ They obviously had more of them in reserves than they thought. Seraphina was still on the loose, and didn’t seem ready to be killed anytime soon. The  _ Elder Council  _ was thinking of evacuating the country. 

“Garret loves you…” Hamsah said, a lilt in his voice. Ember threw a washcloth at him.

It took another solid hour of work before Riley’s burns were properly dealt with. He’d  _ definitely  _ have scars over his chest, especially where the molotov had hit him directly. Just like Ember’s. But considering how much he was talking and how calm Wes was on the other line, he wasn’t in mortal peril. He stumbled to bed the moment Hamsah let him off the ground, taking the phone with him. She and Hamsah grudgingly cleaned up the mess they had left in the apartment.

“So… an attack on the temple,” Hamsah said softly. He leaned against the kitchen counter. “They’re going to need all the help we can get. And as much as your brother’s a chameleon, not having to relay information back and forth will make planning go smoothly. Less room for error.”

“Yeah,” Ember agreed. “It would be smart to all be in the same area.”

“But if there’s ever a chance of taking down Seraphina, it’s when her leg’s shot out and she’s in a city where she can’t shift,” he continued.

“But Riley’s in no position to fight,” Ember said.

“And by the time Shen Nianzu gets here, she could be gone,” Hamsah finished.

“So… we’re tracking her down without his permission, right?”

“Oh definitely.”

***

It took two days, breaking into a police department, a black-market deal made in the most fractured Mandarin in history, and about four hours of sleep between the two of them, but they managed to lure Seraphina to an empty apartment.

The noble thing to do would be to fight her on even ground, Viper to Viper. Which is why they tampered with the carbon monoxide filtration and nearly suffocated her before Ember even went into the room, and why she shot her through the back of the head before she had time to turn around.

“Lilith’s student, indeed,” Hamsah noted. 

Ember gulped. “Vipers to match Vipers.”

“We’re going back to Riley and we’re never mentioning how callous we were again, okay? This is going to haunt my nightmares enough as it is.”

“Yep.”

“Riley’s going to be pissed.”

“ _ Yeah. _ ”

“Let’s go back, then.”


	12. Dante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept my word. I am here.

“Lan-se reported last night that they killed Seraphina, but they suffered serious injuries before they could bring her down. It will take another few days before anyone’s fit to get to this temple.”  _ I’m not going to ask how Ember got carbon monoxide poisoning. I’m not going to tell Garret that Ember has carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s  _ ** _not _ ** _ worth it.  _ “They say that Shen has evacuated the known survivors to Hong Kong, as planned. Since Seraphina is dead, the question is whether or not it’s smart to keep them in Hong Kong, move them back to Shanghai, or continue evacuation to Taiwan.”

Mr. Lei took a deep breath— he looked to have been on the edge of his patience for the past couple of days— and turned to speak with Ms. Wanyan in Mandarin. Dante adjusted his grip on his walking stick and waited for the conversation to turn back to the language he could understand. It wasn’t a decision to be made hastily— There was no guarantee that Hong Kong was safer than Shanghai, and evacuation would leave the survivors in unfamiliar territory, but just because Seraphina was dead didn’t mean that another Viper wouldn’t take her place in Shanghai.

But Seraphina was dead. That was an impressive feat.

“Diyu. Tell your friends to go to the address Pu Jian Lu 1000hao in the zipcode 200120. The Li family lives there and are friends of our kind. Tell the family that they are friends of the Wanyan bloodline. I’m not sure if they speak English, but they can offer a safe place to stay, and their grandfather was a local healer, so they know how to keep a wound clean,” Ms. Wanyan said. “Can you repeat that back to me?”

“Li family, Pu Lian Lu 1000hao, zipcode two hundred-one twenty, we’re friends of the Wanyan family… be polite,” Dante repeated. “Hamsah speaks limited Mandarin, so hopefully the language barrier won’t be too much of an obstacle. Thank you for giving us aid.” He gave a stilted bow.

“You are the ones taking risks for us, at the moment,” Ms. Wanyan said. “The least we can do is to find a place for your friends to stay. What are the extent of the injuries?”

“Lan-se said that all three of them were caught in a fire. His burns are the most severe by far. Nanren—” The name was  _ still  _ weird for him “—also has… carbon monoxide poisoning.”  _ I’m not going to ask about how that happened  _ ** _after _ ** _ the apartment fire. It’s not worth it. _

“I’ll make sure the Li family is informed.  _ Wang Wei! _ ”

A young human rushed in and gave a deep bow. Ms. Zhao said something quickly and he nodded, rushing back out the door. She went back to talking with the others in the room. Dante finally admitted defeat to himself and sat down in the spare chair, trying not to fidget as he waited for a lull in conversation. He knew that his training was starting to slack, because Mr. Smith had once made him sit still for six hours straight, and he was getting antsy after thirty minutes.

There was a brief silence. Dante took a deep breath.

“There is another option to consider,” he said. “I know that you don’t trust Europeans on principle, and with what’s happening, it’s proven to be a wise decision. But even when we resolve the Viper problem, Talon won’t stop coming after us—  _ all  _ of us— until it’s brought to the ground or there’s a regime change. Evacuating anywhere would give you respite, but it’s not a permanent solution. We’ve allied ourselves with some of the soldiers of the Order of St. George that managed to look past prejudice. We have other safehouses that could lend you refuge and give you a better opportunity to fight back against Talon with the support of others.”

There was a brief silence. Dante stayed still. It was a very uncomfortable chair.

“This is not the first time you have extended the offer of an alliance,” Ms. Wanyan spoke for everyone. “The first time, it was through Xuan Yuu, before the night of the Vessel attacks.”

“I am aware, and I hope you know that I’m not trying to push an agenda. Whatever you decide to do, we want these Vipers dead just as much as you. However, I  _ do  _ hope that we have proven that you can trust our organization, and we’re more organized in America than when we first proposed this offer. Lan-se can give you specifics, but he’s currently… busy. As you know.”

Ms. Wanyan nodded. “It seems that there can be some merit in forming an alliance, and we will talk of this in greater length. However, we need to settle our current matter before we can form a long-term plan. Thank you for extending this offer, Mr. Hill.” She let out a long breath. “Until then… we will figure out what to do with the survivors. You may leave and inform your friends of where to go, if you wish.”

Dante stood and gave a small bow. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Stairs were difficult for him, and the temple had taken damage from the Vessel’s attack, but he still went up to the third floor balcony to talk to Ember. Hamsah was the one to pick up. Even though his voice was clipped and they didn’t stray from their conversation topic, there weren’t any hidden barbs like there used to be. Dante supposed that that was the best he could hope for.

Dante hung up and propped his elbows on the balcony railing. He could see everything from there, from the snow-coated cherry trees, dead with winter, to the steep, grey-rocked mountains beyond. Dante still wasn’t a fan of winter— that’s what he got for living in a climate where the only seasons were  _ dry season  _ and  _ even more dry season— _ but it was truly a beautiful place. He wished he could see everything under different circumstances.

The people there were different, as well. It amazed him as much as it frustrated him, the way the Council clung so tightly to tradition, yet allowed him in their room and treated him… not as an  _ equal,  _ but as someone worthy of respect. He remembered cold board meetings and colder stares, his teachers pitting him and his sister against each other, never showing satisfaction in either of them unless they were  _ both _ perfect. And here, they welcomed Jade into the temple warmly even after she was removed from the council. They gave her condolences for her family’s death. People like that didn’t survive in Talon. They were too weak.

Dante was pretty sure he could live his entire life here and still never understand it.

“Inferno.”

Dante turned away from the balcony. Ms. Wanyan stood in the entrance, elegant and straight backed. Dante froze for a moment, more out of reflex than anything else, before he managed to relax.

“That is your English name, am I correct?”

“ _ That’s  _ what Diyu translates to?”

She smirked at him. “I suppose that I am incorrect, then. And yet, you respond to it.”

“It’s… my name is Dante Hill. Inferno is a nickname that I apparently am incapable of shaking,” Dante said, and made a note to apologize to Jade for trying to kill her during the Night of Fang and Fire. Apparently, not all was forgiven. “Does the Elder Council have need of me, Ms. Wanyan?”

“No. We have decided to keep the survivors in Hong Kong for the moment, but once we know details of your underground and how to keep in contact, it’s more than likely that we’ll advise them to leave for America, if they wish to take part in this fight. Closer to danger, but closer to allies, as well. I’ve found that those who settle in cities are often prone to revolution. It’s best that they revolt with allies by their side.”

“We’ll do our best to keep them safe,” Dante said. “Lan-se knows how to avoid Talon. He’s been doing it for a long time, and he’s the only rogue who’s consistently successful in getting other people out, too.”

Ms. Wanyan nodded. “I sense that he has powerful forces on his side. Though his ancestors have their work cut out for them. If the dead could have heart attacks…”

Dante gave a short laugh, because it was true. Ms. Wanyan’s lips twisted into a wry smile before it softened slightly.

“I sometimes think of Zhinu, in these times. I wonder what she’s seeing, with both of her children doing what they’re doing. I think she’d be happy that they’re getting along as best they can. If not concerned that her rebel child now in charge of the family.”

“Did Yuu settle in a city?”

“Yuu has settled everywhere. She had a temple where the monks knew her by name, and when she spent much of her time in Tibet, but she’s never been content to stay in one place. Or one country,” Ms. Wanyan said. “Her antics grants her a world’s view, but she’s learned from mistakes, and leans into chaos, these days. We hoped that by granting her a position on the council, she’d learn restraint, and now we hope that by removing her, she can better find her place in the world. I don’t pretend to know her soul, but I don’t think her place is here.” Ms. Zhao approached the balcony, looking over the landscape. “Perhaps not even China.”

Dante furrowed his brow, thinking over what he knew about the Xuan family. For every interaction Talon trained him for, they never talked about Chinese culture in an accurate way. And he knew  _ nothing  _ about the different families. All that he had was what he had observed.

“Why was Xinguang so angry with her, when we met her? I mean, she didn’t follow tradition very well, and I’m guessing that she missed a lot of his life, but he was…” 

“Yuu has made many mistakes in her life,” Ms. Wanyan said. “You can ask her for details, if you wish, but I wouldn’t violate her privacy like that.”

“That’s fair,” Dante conceded. “You must really care about her. About both of them.”

“Zhinu is no longer here to love her surviving children, so it falls to us,” Ms. Zhao said. There was a brief silence. “You care for the people who you journeyed with. They do not seem to hold those same feelings.”

Dante blinked. “It’s that obvious?”

“Lan-se in particular.”

Dante snorted. “Well… I wasn’t a good person when I was in Talon. I made a lot of mistakes. I… killed people. A lot of people.” Dante paused, careful not to look directly at Ms. Wanyan as he gauged her reaction. She didn’t show any signs of hostility, so he continued. “Lan-se doesn’t actually have kids, but his underground means a lot to him, and I didn’t realize that until I joined them. When I was… younger, and I tried to bring the operation down, I caused the death of… five of them. I’m trying to make amends, and he knows I’m trying to make amends, and it’s working as well as it can. But there isn’t a real way to wipe the slate clean. There  _ shouldn’t  _ be a way to wipe it clean.”

He didn’t feel any anger from Ms. Zhao, even after he spoke. He supposed that it didn’t matter to her the way it mattered to Cobalt. The five hatchlings he killed were just numbers in China, the same way the four hundred temples destroyed were just numbers to the underground.

“The only person who owes you forgiveness is yourself, Dante. It’s not something you can earn. It’s something that you have to find in yourself.”

Dante shrugged. “I’m working on that, too. Being here, knowing that I’m fixing the damage I’ve made… it helps.” He blinked and looked at Ms. Wanyan, who was smirking again. “Is something wrong?”

“This is the most personal information I’ve gotten about you at once,” she said. Dante’s face grew hot. “You are not the only person here who knows how to make others let down their guard, Dante.”

“Right,” Dante looked back at the mountains. The wind whistled through his hair. He shivered, even though he was wearing long sleeves and a canvas jacket. “What do you think should happen after this? Once we kick Talon back to their proper hemisphere, are you going to stay here?”

“We have been speaking about that,” Ms. Wanyan said. “Trust me when I tell you that we’re planning for the future, even when you’re not there to hear it. Trust me as well when I tell you that there are several families that will follow you back to America whether we advise them to or not. Yuu will undoubtedly run back into this fight.”

“Even if it means leaving her brother?”

“Yuu and Xinguang may have their fights, but I don’t doubt that she can convince him to come with her,” she said. “Zhinu wouldn’t approve, but… times are changing. I think it’s time that we change with it.” The wind continued to blow over them, moving clouds across the skies. “What do you think will happen with you?”

Dante looked sharply at her. “Sorry?”

“When your part of the fight is over, what do you intend to do? Do you intend to stay with Lan-se’s underground?”

Dante opened his mouth, but he didn’t have anything to say. He hadn’t thought about it, and that fact sent chills down his spine. He had  _ always  _ known where his life was going. He had planned to be a Chameleon before his even training began. But ever since he joined the underground… assuming the war ended in his lifetime, what  _ would  _ he do? He wanted to stay with Ember. He wanted to at least  _ try  _ to repair his friendship with Hamsah. The days in the Underground were honestly the happiest he had been since Crescent Beach.

But he couldn’t  _ stay  _ there. Not after what he had done to them. And, if they managed to take down the Elder Wyrm without dismantling Talon entirely, he couldn’t go back to the organization, either. He couldn’t trust himself with that.

“I… don’t know,” Dante admitted softly. “I don’t really have anything after this. I… even before they knew what I had done to their underground, I knew I couldn’t stay. I thought I could move to some place without other dragons to escape everything. Iceland, or something.”

“You’re shivering in  _ this  _ weather, and you think you’d survive in Iceland?”

“Good point,” Dante said. “But… I don’t know. I thought I’d go somewhere that no one knew me and… leave everything behind. Fresh start.”

“Is that what you want to do?” Ms. Wanyan asked.

“I don’t know. It could be liberating,” Dante shrugged, keeping his eyes on the horizon. The mountains were truly gorgeous, even in the chill of winter. He wondered what they looked like in spring, with everything in bloom.

“Or very lonely.”

Dante tried not to wince at that. He remembered the first few weeks in Talon, where he had no one to lean on. Even if he kept in contact with Ember, he couldn’t expect her to follow him, wherever he decided to go. She had a life. She had a community. He would never ask her to leave that behind just because he had to. But when he left the underground… it  _ would  _ be lonely.

“I suggest you put some thought into it before your mother dies,” Ms. Wanyan said.

“She’s not really my mom. Just… a DNA-doner.”

Ms. Wanyan gave an amused exhale. Dante managed to smile slightly, and didn’t mention how true it was. He knew that he wasn’t naturally born. No one else needed to.

“In all seriousness, you should put some consideration into what you want your life to be, once this is over. Because it will come to an end. The only thing every empire shares is the fact that it will one day fall,” she said, meeting his eyes. Dante didn’t avert his gaze. He didn’t tense. 

He wasn’t afraid of her.

“I will.”

“Good,” she smiled. “Then I can put an offer on the table for you: you are welcome at the Lung Miao, should you need a place to come to. If staying among us is something that you  _ want. _ ”

Dante blinked. Ms. Wanyan’s voice wasn’t cold, or barbed, or hiding a secret price that he’d have to pay for the favor. It was just an offer. A place to stay. A place to say goodbye to everything he had been, and remake who he was.

“I don’t know,” he said. He swallowed and looked back at the horizon. China was a truly beautiful land. He  _ could  _ spend a lifetime here. “But I guess I’m the one who gets to figure it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dante deserves a place to be happy 2k20.


	13. Dante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have now officially lost track of how long quarantine has lasted.

It took four days for Ember, Riley, and Hamsah to return to the Lung Miao. They arrived looking worse for wear, and Dante noted that Riley looked like he wanted to pass out when the Elder Council invited him to share a report, but they were all in one piece. That was the most anyone could hope for.

“When did you get a fucking tattoo?”

Dante supposed that he deserved this.

“About a week and a half ago.”

“You ignored the tattoo ban?”

“C’mon, it’s  _ one— _ ”

“You ignored the tattoo ban  _ without me? _ ” Ember grabbed his arm. “Oh, it’s  _ really  _ pretty… I can’t believe  _ you  _ got a tattoo before me. I’ve wanted one for ages, and you went ahead and got one while I was out.” 

“Well… sorry?” Dante shrugged. He decided not to tell her that Hamsah gave it to him. He doubted that she’d let either of them rest until she got one, as well. “I wanted one, too. I decided it’s time I have some healthy teenage rebellion. You ran off to join the rogue underground, I got a tattoo.”

“Where did you get it done? The artist is amazing… wait, does the  _ Elder Council  _ know how to tattoo?”

“Why, do you have something in mind?”

“A tattoo of the planets,” Ember said. Dante grinned widely. “I don’t know where, but I want it in color. With the moons of Earth and Jupiter included. Don’t look at me like that, it’s not my fault my dreams of being an astronaut are doomed! Besides, it would be either that or capricorn.”

Dante furrowed his brow. “The goat-fish?”

Ember flicked the side of his head. “The constellation. I wouldn’t put a goat-fish on my body, but if I could get someone to map out the stars and maybe do the symbol… it would look nice. And it’s my zodiac.”

“Your  _ zodiac, _ ” Dante repeated. 

Ember rolled her eyes. Apparently, a near-death experience hadn’t hindered her ability to be unimpressed by him, even if it  _ had  _ taken a few inches of hair from the left part of her head and caused some scars on her arms. Not the worst thing that could happen; the hair would grow back, and the scars were light enough that they wouldn’t be there in a few months. Nothing like Riley’s injuries. Dante was surprised that he was walking around as nonchalantly as he was, even  _ with  _ draconic healing in mind. He had taken a molotov to the chest. Those things were nasty.

At the farmhouse, he could easily forget the fact that this side of the war tended to have a high mortality rate, but he had no such luxury in China. Ember and her group were lucky to escape with nothing but burns and bad memories; they could’ve suffered much,  _ much  _ worse by going up against Seraphina. They easily could’ve died.

With what happened at the temple,  _ he  _ easily could’ve died, too. 

“Hey. When this is over, we could get that Capricorn constellation together. It’s my zodiac, too,” he said. Ember raised her eyebrows. “What?”

“You don’t care about space.”

“Nope,” Dante agreed. “I’ll let you talk to me about the stars in Capricorn when we get them. I’m sure you have them memorized.”

“I do,” Ember said, a faint softness in her smile. “When this is over. We’ll go to a professional tattoo artist.” She wrinkled her nose. “Where did you get it done?”

“Places,” Dante said. He sat down on the bench and shivered. Winter in the Chinese Mountains still involved  _ snow.  _ “So Seraphina is dead.”

“Yep.”

“And the Li family was cool?”

“Their English was horrible, but they were nice. They had a cat. It took a liking to Riley, strangely enough. I now know how to say _hello, yes, no, does it hurt,_ _thank you, _and _kitty _in Mandarin,” Ember said. 

“I know how to say  _ thank you, yes, no,  _ and what I’m pretty sure is the old Chinese equivalent of  _ fuck this, _ ” Dante responded. Ember snorted. “Hey, you had a stressful time, we had a stressful time, they can’t act dignified forever.”

There was a silence between them, other than his and Ember’s shivering. They were both alive, even with Ember’s new scars and the constant ache in his back that came with cold. Hamsah and Riley were alive.

They had all come close. And he’d be an idiot to think that any of them would stay the same after this.

“I’m going to go inside and scavenge some of the warm leaf water that seems to be abundant,” Dante stood with a wince. “And  _ you  _ should probably be talking with the Elder Council with Riley and Hamsah, right?”

“I told them that I wanted to check on you first.”

“You left them without a diplomat. They’re doomed without you. Go. Shoo.”

“I feel so loved…”

Dante rolled his eyes and started up the stairs to the temple. They had come close, but they were still alive, and Talon didn’t have access to the locations of the Shen-Lungs. The Elder Council was  _ listening  _ to them. Things were actually going fairly well. He wasn’t allowed to wrap Ember in a blanket and forbid her from doing anything reckless. He had tried doing that before, and it made her run away and join a rogue underground. 

Dante shivered again. He could wrap  _ himself  _ in a blanket and forbid him from doing anything reckless.

The guest hallway wasn’t much warmer than the outdoors, but it was out of the wind and snow, and one of the rooms had a fireplace. He paused for a few seconds before he knocked on Jade and Xinguang’s door. He  _ knew  _ they had tea in their room. He wasn’t overly fond of it, but he was cold, and it  _ did  _ help. Besides, after so much time stuck in this temple, he had grown somewhat attached to the only other sibling pair he had met.

“Who’s there?” Xinguang’s voice came through the door.

“Not a Viper, is who,” he said. “Can I come in and scavenge your tea?”

“Oh.” The door opened, revealing Xinguang. His hair was loose, and there were slight circles under his eyes, but he didn’t seem annoyed by the intrusion. He was, however, holding his bow, which made Dante very glad that he had knocked before opening the door.

“Diyu,” he greeted.

“Starlight,” Dante responded.

Xinguang snorted softly and opened the door further, motioning him inside before closing the door behind him and getting a teapot. 

“I can—”

“Your tea is horrible,” Xinguang interrupted. Dante decided that it wasn’t worth protesting otherwise. “Sit.”

Dante sat on his knees, back as straight as he could make it, and looked around the room idly. The curtains on the window were drawn tight, and a gun was on Jade’s bedside table. Xinguang had his quiver slung over his shoulder. What had happened had shaken both of them, but he didn’t behave any differently as he got his supplies together and sat across from him, lighting the burner under the pot as he added leaves.

“Where’s Yuu?” Dante asked.

“At the village, making sure that letters are sent. Lianhua wanted her out of the temple for a few hours. She has been… what’s the word…” Xinguang furrowed his brow and looked at Dante questioningly. Dante shrugged. “She doesn’t want to let me be alone. It’s become annoying.”

Dante felt his lips twitch slightly. “It’s because she loves you.”

“I  _ know.  _ But I’m not the one who fought an adult Vessel. I stayed inside, like I was supposed to.” He muttered, blowing a stray strand of hair out of his face. “I worry for her. We don’t have anyone else anymore, but… she’s involved in this war, now. I can’t stop her from being reckless.”

Dante related to that more than he wanted to admit. 

“She knows what she wants,” he said. “You have to trust that she knows that much. She wants to keep you safe, and she wants to see this war end. I’m not going to say that she knows what she’s  _ doing,  _ but… none of us do, really. Give her some trust.”

“Trust is not my strength when it comes to my sister,” Xinguang admitted softly. The tea began to boil, so he turned down the heat and added a stick of cinnamon. “Lan never spoke highly of her, and Yuu was always… away. She didn’t care to defend herself.”

“Ms. Wanyan spoke with me about her,” Dante said. He paused, debating whether or not to ask what, exactly, made Xinguang so angry at her when they first met him. “She said that Yuu was never content to stay in one place. It’s not a good or a bad thing. It’s just who she is.”

“Much like your own,” Xinguang noted. Dante shrugged. “Is it different, to have a twin instead of a… normal sibling?”

“Is it different to have a half-sibling instead of a twin?” Dante asked.

“We don’t count a father’s blood as part of the lineage. Yuu is my sister,” Xinguang said shortly. Dante blinked. “Draconic laws are different than human laws, remember. There are exceptions for a life-bond, but those are rare, and it’s even rarer that someone actually  _ follows  _ them. Mostly, men aren’t around to aid the child, so our concept of fathers is... lacking. You Westerners don’t have parents at all, if I remember correctly.”

“You remember correct,” Dante rubbed some warmth into his fingers. 

“Do you know the words in draconic?” Xinguang asked.

Dante blinked, thinking. He hadn’t used that language in a few months, but he remembered it well. He spent the first six years of his life using it.

“No,” he said. Not liking the silence that followed that particular discovery, continued with, “So… Yuu carries the family legacy, then?”

Xinguang nodded.

“Are you okay with that?”

“I can feel Lan rolling in her grave, but I think I will be.” Xinguang gave a light smile. “Yuu… was not the sister that I wanted. But I’m glad I have her, now. Turns out she’s not so bad.”

“That’s something I can understand very well,” Dante responded, eyes drifting to the door. 

He wanted to be in the Council room with Ember, making sure that she was safe and he could help. He wanted to know what they were planning, because they  _ were  _ planning something. Ms. Wanyan had spoken to him of families that had lost people to the Night of Fang and Fire, to whom fighting seemed like a good idea. Those were some of the people Jade was sending letters to. But organizing that had to come  _ after  _ they took care of the current problem. They had to kill Stealth.

That wouldn’t be easy for anyone. He hoped that Cobalt and Hamsah had come to terms with that fact.

“Yuu is going to come back with us,” Dante said. Xinguang nodded silently. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

“I have thought,” Xinguang responded. He turned the heat off and motioned slightly to Dante, who poured for both of them. Xinguang poured a third cup and put the pot down. “Mother wouldn’t want me to go. She is… was…” he paused. “She valued tradition, especially now that humans are moving so fast. Part of our tradition is that we don’t influence outsiders. Not humans, not… other dragons.” He sighed, taking a long sip of tea. “Lan followed mother with those thoughts. I don’t know what made Yuu so contrary to those traditions, but... she is.”

_ Lan was better at those traditions than she was, so she broke from them entirely.  _ Dante kept the thought to himself, because he didn’t have any proof to support it. He didn’t know how close Jade and Lan had been, only that, by the time Xinguang came around, they didn’t get along. But part of him thought that that was why Ember always hated the rules they were given. That was the reason he clung to them so hard, after all.

“I do want to honor Mother,” he said. “But… my sister is the one that is alive. She’s more important than what mother would want me to do, if she were still here. I will be going with her, if only to keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t do anything too…”

“Reckless,” Dante finished. He drank his tea, breathing in the steam and trying to focus on its warmth rather than the cold of the air around him. “You’re smart. Smarter than I was, when my sister left.”

“I do try,” Xinguang said. “Besides, I’ve lived my entire life through traditions. I think it’s time to see other ways of life.”

“Well, lucky for you, you have friends to support you in the underground,” Dante said. “Even if I’ll probably be locked in the basement when I get back.”

Xinguang winced. “What did you do?”

“Worked for Talon. I’ve talked to Ms. Wanyan about it. You can ask her for details,” Dante said. He took another sip of tea. “It’ll be nice, having another visitor.”

A comfortable silence settled between the two of them as they drank their tea and Dante refilled their cups. He knew they were both wondering what was happening in the council room, and worrying about their respective sisters. But neither of them had information to offer, and both Ember and Jade were as safe as they ever were. Eventually, they finished the pot. Xinguang took the third cup, stood gracefully, and threw the contents out the window to complete the ritual that neither of them were actually participating in.

Dante didn’t say it, but he was relieved that Xinguang would be coming back with them. It made the prospect of returning to the farmhouse, where he had discovered his freedom and lost it just as quickly, less daunting. It would be nice to have a friend again.

There was a knock on the door.

“Shi Hamsah,” the person said before Xinguang could do so much as tense. He said a few more words that Dante couldn’t understand, but Xinguang was already at the door, pulling it open for him. They spoke back and forth for a few minutes, Xinguang quick and rapid, Hamsah faltering but able to carry the conversation fairly well. Dante looked him over as subtley as he could— he was wearing long sleeves, but they didn’t quite cover the shiny burn scars on his hands. They were faint like Ember’s, so they wouldn’t leave any lasting scars, and he wasn’t holding himself like he was in pain, but they would put any tattoo plans on hold.

“You’re  _ sure  _ that you were a Chameleon?” Hamsah spoke in English, looking at Dante. So apparently he had been caught staring. 

“I was secretly a Gila this whole time,” Dante responded. “You can tell by the muscles and the excellent combat skills.”

Hamsah snorted. “And that’s why you got kidnapped. How’s your tattoo?” 

Dante pulled back his sleeve to show Hamsah. “No infection. I can’t thank you enough for doing it, Hamsah. I hope you know how much it means to me.”

“I have three of them. I think I understand,” he said before turning back to Xinguang. “The Elder Council has decided that the best way to end this battle quickly is to draw Stealth out of hiding and… dispose of her. We know that she’s somewhere near this area, or she  _ was.  _ They sent a man down the mountain to stake out the village, but I doubt they’ll find her there. We know that she wants the census, and we know that she wants Cobalt dead, but one of those things she could snipe from 200 yards out and the other one is really hard to lure her with, so… they’re talking. They sent me outside because I’m a bit biased when it comes to Stealth. I was wondering if I could stay here until the meeting’s over.”

“Of course,” Xinguang said, opening the door wider. Hamsah slipped inside, eyes going to the boarded window, then back to the door, then between Dante and Xinguang. He leaned against the wall, next to the fireplace, where he could keep an eye on everyone in the room. Dante knew that Hamsah wasn’t doing it because he didn’t trust them. He doubted Hamsah realized what he was doing at all.

Dante looked away. He wasn’t going to mention it to anyone, yet, but he wasn’t sure how much longer Hamsah could take this mission. He wasn’t sure how much longer any of them could, other than maybe Garret. 

Maybe St. Goerge had a therapist they could see.

“So, what would interest Stealth?” Xinguang said.

“Hey, I just left the meeting, I’m  _ not  _ talking about Stealth,” Hamsah said, then followed with, “She’s not a sadist, so she would kill any living bait as efficiently as possible, no matter personal history. But she’s still motivated by normal Talon things. Information. Wealth. Power…” Hamsah’s brow furrowed, staring at Dante. 

Dante cocked his head to the side. “Yes?” 

Hamsah’s eyes widened. “ _ No.  _ Nothing. Nothing. I was just thinking.”

“What were you thinking about.”

“How much you need a haircut. It looks horrible.”

“Hamsah, if there’s any information—” Xinguang said.

“It’s  _ nothing, _ ” Hamsah snapped.

Dante pursed his lips and looked away. Information would be the census, obviously. A basilisk might try to capture one of them alive for interrogation, but Stealth was an assassin. She’d much rather kill them. When it came to wealth, she wasn’t stupid enough to try to steal anything in the middle of a high-stakes mission. Power… she got that by completing her mission. 

Or, if they trusted Hyaeni, by collecting a bounty.

“She couldn’t snipe me from 200 yards out,” Dante spoke before he could think through the words, because he  _ really  _ didn’t want to be used as bait, he had already gone on a suicide mission, and if Hamsah didn’t want him to consider the option, it was probably a horrible idea.

“That’s what you were thinking, right?”

“I didn’t  _ say _ it!”

“I’m not saying it’s a good idea, I’d much prefer a safer lure, but… Stealth didn’t get to where she is by not chasing ambition, and if Hyaeni said that bringing me back alive was rewarded with favor from the Elder Wyrm herself. It would certainly end the mission quickly.”

“ _ No, _ ” Xinguang snapped, glaring at Dante with a venom he generally only reserved for jade. “Too risky.”

“I could swallow a tracker or something.”

“She’d still get a promotion if she shot you from 200 yards out,” Hamsah said. “It’s not worth the risk.”

“But if I’m alone and far enough away from the temple for anyone to hear me put up a fight, why would she settle for a promotion?” 

Why was he  _ campaigning  _ for this? Dante shut his mouth. The plan was half-baked and risky. This was a superelite Viper who had plenty of reasons to prefer him dead. He’d have  _ nothing  _ to defend himself, not even his claws and fire. Even if he didn’t die, the chances of him being injured were so high it made him cold to think about it.

But they couldn’t do  _ nothing.  _ They couldn’t compromise the census. If they sent Riley as bait, he’d be killed without a second thought. And most importantly, they were running out of time. Time before the Vipers found other ways to complete their mission, before Stealth lost her patience and decided to simply blow the temple up, before Hamsah or Riley or Ember broke down and went insane.

He didn’t know who would be the first to fly off the rails, but none of them had much longer.

“Ember Hill probably has a similar price on her head. In fact, she’d be  _ guaranteed  _ to be taken in alive and uninjured, if the Elder Wyrm wants her vessel back,” Hamsah said slowly. Dante stiffened. “Don’t look at me like that, Dante. You’re fine with offering yourself.”

“But…”  _ Ember’s my sister, dammit, and you  _ ** _know _ ** _ that, _ “if something goes wrong and the Elder Wyrm gets her hands on Ember, she gets another thousand years on her lifespan. So that’s out of the question.”

“And you running off to find a Viper isn’t?” Xinguang crossed his arms.

“I’d rather not have to do that, no, but we need  _ some  _ sort of solution, and we need one fast,” Dante said, crossing his arms back, splitting his glare between Hamsah and Xinguang. “There could be better ideas out there. There probably are. But I think that we should keep this on the table as an option. An  _ option.  _ Why are you glaring at me, Hamsah, it’s not like I’m asking you to sacrifice yourself. That would get you just as dead as Cobalt.”

“Because I’m not letting you risk your life,  _ idiot. _ ”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

Hamsah flinched slightly. “Fuck you.”

“Eloquent.”

“If we’re keeping your self-sacrificial idiocy, we’re keeping Ember on the table. She’s more useful alive, she can defend herself, and she’s been travelling with  _ Cobalt,  _ so her paranoia levels are probably on par with his,” Hamsah said. “I don’t  _ want  _ to use Ember as bait. But I’m not about to let you go and die because you feel guilty. Live with your guilt like the rest of us.”

Dante narrowed his eyes. “ _ That’s  _ what you think it is?”

“Yes,” Xinguang muttered, still glaring Dante down. Like he was a misbehaving child.

“If I wanted to die, I think I’d be more efficient about it,” Dante snapped. He turned back to Hamsah. “You were the one who thought of it. I just think we need to solve this quickly and with as little risk as possible, and this is the best option we know of. Ember is more of a risk than I am, because as much as I’d really like to live… the worst they can do is kill me. They’ll turn Ember into a puppet.”

Hamsah looked away, fists clenched at his sides. Then he straightened, sucked in a breath, and gave Dante a smile that fooled no one.

“C’mon, Dante Hill. I think we should take our  _ options  _ to the Elder Council.”


	14. Ember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the LAST CHAPTER before the epilogue (I am now fancy enough to write epilogues). I have worked very hard on this chapter (there's a lot that I had to fit in), and several scenes turned out very differently than I expected, but I'm happy with it. 
> 
> On a more pleading note, corona is effecting everyone strangely, and in my case, it has reduced my ability to talk to people to pretty much nothing. No one owes it to me to review, but I haven't gotten anything for the last few chapters, and this chapter does mean a lot to me.

Ember had never in her life seen two people more angry at each other while presenting what was essentially the same plan.

Of course, she knew the reason why Dante and Hamsah both seemed ready to jump at the other’s throat: Dante wasn’t willing to risk Ember’s life. Hamsah was afraid that Dante was trying to sacrifice himself to prove a point about his allegiance.

Ember thought that Hamsah’s plan was more foolproof, even when she tried put aside the fact that she agreed with Hamsah’s worries. Ember was only valuable alive,  _ and  _ she was more likely to run off by herself, so it wouldn’t cause as much suspicion for Stealth. She was actually able to defend herself if it came down to it. And, most importantly, she didn’t feel that she had anything to prove. Using herself as bait didn’t mean anything to her, it was just the best strategic choice they had.

From the looks of it, Dante’s training as a Chameleon and knowledge that Hamsah was a Viper were the only things stopping him from trying to violently behead his friend.

“This is actually a fairly sound plan, as plans go,” Ember said. Riley, Dante, and Garret glared at her. “ _ What?  _ We don’t have any other ideas that don’t involve one of us dying. We need a lure. All of Talon knows there’s a price on my head by now.”

“Or Dante’s,” Riley said.

“Or Dante’s,” Ember admitted, and tried not to match his glare. “Or we could call up Mist, get her over here. I’m sure she’d love that. But I’m the only one who’s value hinges on me being both alive and able-bodied. I can swallow a tracker, so you’ll know where I am the entire time. And then you can snipe her from 200 yards. She’ll be dead before she hits the ground.”

“And if things go wrong—”

“We make sure they  _ don’t, _ ” Ember said firmly, turning to the Elder Council. “You are the most objective figures in this…”  _ Slap-fight,  _ “debate. Do you think that, with proper planning, we could pull this off?”

The five of them looked between each other silently.

“With proper planning, it is possible, and it is the only feasible idea that we have. I don’t want any of you to needlessly risk your lives, but we do need to end this quickly,” Ms. Wanyan said. Her eyes went to Dante and crinkled with sympathy, ever so slightly. “I understand your hesitation towards putting your sister in danger, but she does have a better chance of—”

“No,” Riley interrupted. Several members of the Council straightened, but he didn’t back down or attempt to apologize. “ _ Respectfully,  _ it’s not your decision to use Ember or Dante as bait. They’re part of my underground, so it’s my job to—” he took a deep, steadying breath. “They’re  _ my  _ kids. We have already risked so much for you, and I’m not trying to hold that above you. Truly. You aren’t in debt to us. But using one of them—  _ any  _ of them as a lure is off the table. And that goes for you, too, Hamsah, so don’t offer.”

“I’m eighteen, it’s not your—”

“You’re still my kid and my responsibility. The answer’s no,” he snapped. It wasn’t hard to hear the desperation in his voice. “I know that all of you are capable, even Infierno. But there is a difference between letting you fight and using you as bait for a trained assassin. I promised I’d keep you safe, so this is a line I’m not willing to compromise on.”

Ember looked at the floor. Riley had already lost five hatchlings he had promised to protect. This was rubbing salt into the wound.

“I think that Dante, Hamsah, and I should step out,” Ember said. “Dante and I have already stated our opinions. We’re the most biased. It…  _ should  _ be considered as an option unless we find something better.” Ember didn’t look at Riley when she said it. “But nothing will get done when Dante and I are in the room. And we already decided it would be best if Hamsah didn’t have to listen to this. Riley has his opinions, but they apply to both of us, so… he should be there.”

Mr. Lei nodded in agreement, looking over her and Dante coldly. She matched it with her best impression of Dante’s diplomatic smile, and his glare deepend.

“I believe that would be wise,” he said. “Nanren. Diyu. Hamsah. We will send for you when we have reached a decision.”

Ember gave a slight bow and stood from her guest chair, giving an apologetic grimace to Riley, who looked like he wanted to throw something at either her or the Elder Council.

“Garret. Look after Riley,” Ember said.

“Of course.”

“I don’t need looked after.”

The three of them left, the doors closing behind them. For a few seconds, there was a stiff silence, where none of them spoke or decided to leave. Then:

“Did you really have to bring Ember up as an option?”

“It’s smarter to use her!” Hamsah rounded on Dante. “I get that you want to keep her safe, but none of us are safe right now, and she has the best chance of  _ staying  _ safe if we go through with this. Hell, I didn’t want to use either of you as bait, but since you were so fixed on sacrificing someone, we might as well go with the person who’s least likely to actually  _ die. _ ”

Dante glared at him. “You thought about that option before I did.”

“Yeah. I did. But I also think about how best to kill everyone in the underground at any given time, so that means absolutely nothing. But either way, Ember Hill is able-bodied, better-trained, not to mention that’s it’s much more likely that she’d go wandering off by herself. And she’s only useful if she’s alive.”

“Makes me wonder why Faith tried so hard to murder me,” Ember muttered. Dante winced, and Hamsah stiffened. “Sorry. Sore subject for… everyone, actually. But anyway. It’s a better plan if we use me, and you  _ know  _ that. Besides, you’ve already gone on a suicide mission that I hated with all my heart and soul. It’s my turn, now.”

Ember gave a smile that she knew was completely unreassuring. She had hated the mission to the Vessel labs. She knew that, even though he had had a better chance at survival, she wanted to be the one to do it. She knew he remembered that, too.

And by the look on his face, he was realizing that.

“You’re not invincible. I hope you know that,” he said. “I know you’ve gotten through a lot, but you can still get hurt. You can still  _ die. _ ”

“I know,” Ember responded. She had known that for a while— since Seraphina tried to burn her to death, since the Night of Fang and Fire, since being caught by the Elder Wyrm, since fighting Faith, since being shot at the St. George Western Chapterhouse four days after going rogue. She knew that she was a good fighter with good friends to support her, and that she was  _ lucky.  _ She wasn’t invincible.

She wasn’t too afraid of Stealth, though. Not when she knew that, by the Elder Wyrm’s standards, Ember was infinitely more important.

“For all we know, Riley and the Elder Council will think of a better solution. We’re smart, but they’re… old as dirt,” Hamsah said. “And if anyone can find a solution that doesn’t involve putting any of us in danger, it’ll be Riley. He got eleven years without having to sacrifice any of his hatchlings for a greater cause. He’s honestly impressive.”

Dante managed a weak smile. “He is.”

Ember raised her eyebrows.

“ _ Don’t.  _ Mock me for saying that. Just because we hated each other doesn’t mean I can’t amend my previous stance on his existence,” he said.

Ember snorted. “He never hated you, Tweedledum.” She cast a glance at Hamsah to try to convey that he wasn’t supposed to try to negate it. She knew that Dante would catch her expression, but the words needed to be out there. Even after Riley knew what Dante had done, he hadn’t  _ hated  _ him. Because she knew, even though he didn’t tell her, that Riley had done worse.

“Well. I suppose I’ll take your word for it,” Dante said. He shivered slightly and cringed at the movement. “Okay, the cold  _ really  _ isn’t helping my comfort. I’m going to… go back to Xinguang’s room and take a nap. And apologize to him. Tell me if anything changes.”

“Will do,” Ember nodded. Dante turned and limped back down the hall, and Ember faintly noted that she could barely envision how he moved before the incident. 

She and Hamsah made their way to the entrance, sitting on the steps of the temple. It wasn’t snowing anymore, but there was a thick coat of white over the gardens, and clouds low in the sky. Ember thought of harvested cornfields and sitting on the porch of a cramped farmhouse.

“You did really well with Seraphina. And with Hyaeni,” Hamsah said. “You fight more like Cobalt than like Lilith, but you make it work. If we end up having to use you as a lure, you’re going to do it well. You’ll just have to worry about selling the act.”

Ember nodded, and debated with herself over if she wanted to mention that she heard his voice waver.

“I had no respect for Lilith,” she said. “ _ Zero.  _ I hated her with everything I had, so it never hurt when Mist killed her. But I know that Faith really liked her. I know that Dante had a lot of respect for his trainer, too. And Garret could never kill Lieutenant Martin. You deserve to give yourself more credit than you do, for how you’re dealing with this. And more sympathy.”

“I’d rather not talk about it until after the mission is over. I’ll cry about it to Astatine Lopez and Kain Broussard afterwards,” he said softly. “She’d slit my throat if I gave her the opportunity, and if she had trained the compassion out of me like she was supposed to, I’d do the same. This situation  _ sucks.  _ But it needs to happen, and I can’t be a weak link in this. So… I won’t be.”

“Just that easy?”

“Chances are, I won’t even be involved. It’s safer for everyone if I’m out of the equation,” he said. He pursed his lips for a moment. “And Riley’s efficient. He’ll be the one behind the gun, and he’ll make it quick. That’s all I want.”

Ember nodded. She didn’t tell him that she was worried that Riley was slipping ever since Hyaeni, that Stealth had been his friend, and this could be just as painful for him as it was going to be for Hamsah. What they needed was someone entirely detached from the situation. Someone who didn’t have emotional stake. And someone who was good with a sniper rifle.

Tristan would be useful, if he wasn’t still recovering from a TBI and also halfway across the world.

_ Halfway across the world.  _ The thought made Ember’s chest ache.

“I miss the farmhouse,” she said softly. “I know it’s a bit stupid, but—”

“It’s not,” Hamsah interrupted. “I miss it too. I….” he wrapped his arms around his stomach, scuffing the stairs with his foot. “I’m afraid to go back, though. I don’t know if I can face everyone else.” 

Ember nodded. That was exactly how she thought about Crescent Beach.

The temple doors opened harshly. Ember and Hamsah both sprung to their feet, Ember reaching for her gun before she processed what was happening. Garret was pulling Riley by the wrist, his expression completely closed off, and Riley was— he was—

He was letting Garret lead him without complaining. He didn’t talk back when Garret gave the order to  _ sit,  _ either. His entire body was shaking, his breathing was coming out wrong, and he wasn’t quite  _ crying,  _ but he looked pretty damn close. He sat on the temple steps when Garret told him to, put his head in his hands, and pulled hard at his hair.

“Give me your hands.” Garret said, kneeling in front of him. “Now, Riley.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re going to pull your hair out.”

“Fuck off.”

“ _ Riley, _ ” Garret said. Riley shook his head. “You’re hurting yourself.”

“’S just hair.” His voice sounded tight and fragile, shaking as badly as the rest of him. “’S fine. I— I’m  _ fine. _ ”

“You’re actively having a panic attack, and you’re saying you’re fine?”

“Is there a way to  _ passively  _ have one?”

Garret looked at Ember half desperately, as if she knew what a panic attack was in the first place. Riley looked like he was going insane on the temple steps. She hadn’t dealt with a mental breakdown before. The closest she had ever gotten was dealing with Dante when he was feverish, and Riley didn’t have the promise of thinking clearly once the fever broke.

“Okay. Okay… you’re not dying, I promise you you’re not dying, there’s nothing physically wrong, and there’s no shame in what’s happening. Either give me your hands or stop pulling your hair. Now. Make a choice or I’m grabbing your wrists, and neither of us are going to like that.”

“ _ Shut up. _ ”

“What the hell happened?” Ember hissed.

“I’m  _ fine. _ ”

“The meeting wasn’t going well,” Garret whispered. He tried to untangle Riley’s hand from his hair as Riley pulled several of them out.

“It wasn’t the fucking meeting,” Riley muttered, tightening his grip. “I swear to god if you keep touching me—”

“You’re hurting yourself.”

“ _ Fuck off. _ ”

“If it wasn’t the meeting—”

“It wasn’t the  _ fucking meeting. _ ” Riley yanked hard at his hair. Ember cringed, and Garret stopped trying to pull his hands away.

“What was it, then?”

“ _ Fuck you. _ ”

“Riley,” Ember whispered. Riley’s breath hitched. “Talk to us. Please.”

“It’s everything, it’s fucking  _ everything,  _ I’m trying to keep my hatchlings safe and I’m trying to beat back Talon and I’m trying to do the right thing and I still lost my kids and I’m still supposed to be a leader and  _ basilisks aren’t meant to be leaders,  _ we’re made not to care about  _ anything,  _ and I still had to torture a woman and pretend it was  _ fun _ and— and you don’t understand, you— you—”

He pulled hard, and his hair came out in a thick clump, tangled around his fingers. He inhaled sharply as his head jerked out of his hands. His eyes were golden-reptilian.

_ “Ow. _ ” He whispered. When Garret took his wrists, he didn’t protest. He took several deep breaths, blinked hard, and shook his head. “Shit, this— this isn’t supposed to happen, I can’t let this happen until we’re safe…” He tried to reach back up to his head. Garret kept his grip. “Give me back my hands.”

“Not until you stop hurting yourself.”

“I am  _ not—  _ I…” His breaths were coming out in uneven bursts, like they each took a conscious effort. “This is just hard on everyone. That’s all. I’ll go back in there, apologize…  _ fuck,  _ I was just getting their respect,  _ fucking hell.  _ This is going to set us back weeks...”

“That’s not a problem, right now,” Garret said. “They’ll understand. This is a hard situation, and you’ve held up for a  _ very  _ long time, I’m honestly impressed, and it’s not like it’s going to do any more than delay them for half an hour.”

Ember could only stare. Riley’s hair was still clenched in his hand, and part of his scalp was bleeding. He was supposed to be the one who had himself under control. He was the one that dragged Ember back from punching mirrors and trying to do anything but sleep. She had no idea how to help.

She sat down next to him and, with a look to Garret, took one of his hands, interlocking their fingers. He clenched it until his knuckles turned white, and his breaths started coming out in sobs.

“I can’t keep doing this… I  _ promised—  _ I told myself I’d never have to interrogate someone again, I promised that— that no matter what I’d have to do, I wouldn’t be going back to  _ that,  _ not like that, and— and it’s my job to keep you safe, I promised I’d keep everyone safe, I can’t lose anyone else, I can’t… I—” he hiccuped slightly. “God, crying  _ sucks,  _ how do humans stand it?”

“Crying is good for you,” Garret said.

“Fuck that.” He kept crying, leaning into Ember like she was the most solid thing he could find. 

“The soldier’s right,” Hamsah said. Ember turned to look at him; he was keeping his distance, and his entire body was tense. “Do… you want me to get a phone? Call Wes?”

“ _ No. _ ”

“Are you sure?”

“ _ Yes. _ ” Riley tried to pull his hand out of Ember’s grasp, like it was a reflex. He took a few quick, deep breaths. Ember couldn’t tell if he was getting control over his breath or hyperventilating. “Okay. Okay… I’m okay. Not going to pull my hair out. Give me back my hands.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good—”

“My eyes are itchy,” he cut Garret off. “Please.”

The temple door opened. Ember craned her neck as Xinguang came out, approaching them cautiously. Riley managed to stop crying and straighten, finally wrenching his hand out of Garret’s and wiping his eyes.

“I heard yelling,” Xinguang offered as explanation. “It sounded… important.”

“Geez, you can’t let me have a mental breakdown in peace?” Riley said. His voice was tight again, and his shoulders were still shaking. “It’s nothing. I’m  _ fine.  _ You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Yuu said this could happen,” he said. He glanced between the three of them and Hamsah, brow crinkled with concern. “She’s good at noticing… cracks.”

“Well good for her, we can all share in my humiliation.”

“I brought a phone out,” he offered. “I know you have your friend in America, if you want to talk to him. I can go back inside, if you would prefer, but you should… consider. Talking to him.”

“I don’t want to,” Riley muttered. He wrapped a lock of hair around his fingers only for Garret to grab his wrist again. “ _ Stop it. _ ”

“No,” Garret said, untangling Riley’s hair from his hand. “You should call Wes. He’ll be able to help. He… he knows more about your past than we do. He’d understand better.”

“I don’t  _ want to. _ ”

“He’s going to know eventually, whether you tell him or not,” Hamsah said. Riley turned and glared at him. Hamsah stared back unrepentantly. “He’s perceptive. And he knows you. Might as well tell him now.”

Riley kept glaring, everything about his posture rigid. The air was tense and silent around the five of them. Blood was beading around his temple. She could smell acrid smoke on his breath, like it was taking everything not to shift. He took a breath and seemed to deflate slightly, holding out his hand towards Xinguang.

In the second before Xinguang passed the phone off to Riley, Ember could hear the sound of an engine. That was the only warning she had before an ear-shattering  _ BOOM  _ shook the mountainside.

She was on the ground in an instant, stone and debris cracking and crumbling, dust rising from the temple,  _ fire  _ that reminded her of napalm and hotel rooms and  _ Faith _ . She could hear the stone in the temple  _ snap,  _ and managed to raise her head.

The damage was… 

_ Oh my god. _

“Shit!” Riley was at her side, dragging her to her feet. Ember sucked in a breath as she felt her ribs protest, but they felt bruised, not broken. He was covered in dust, eyes still bloodshot, bleeding from the bald spot on his temple and the piece of limestone brick embedded in his arm. “Hamsah, Garret!”

“I’m here,” came Garret’s voice. She couldn’t see him through the smoke and dust.

“Take cover,  _ now. _ Where did that even…  _ fuck.  _ C’mon, we’re in the open, we’re too easy to take out.”

“The Elder Council… everyone in the…”

Parts of it were standing, but she knew where the main chamber was, and whoever had just  _ blown it up  _ had known it too, because there was  _ nothing left.  _ The east wing was partially collapsed and still crumbling, the entire thing was going up in black smoke, and  _ no one  _ could survive that, could they? No one. Not a human, not a dragon,  _ no one. _

“Hamsah!” Riley screamed. He dragged them both towards the sound Garret’s voice had come from. Further from the Lung Miao, as if he had been thrown in the explosion. There was silence. “ _ Hamsah!  _ C’mon, kid, where are you?”

They found Garret. His arm was wrapped around his chest, and there was blood coming from one of his ears, but he was standing

“Fuck fuck  _ fuck,  _ Hamsah! Hamsah, please!”

There was a scream from the temple. Ember’s eyes widened, and Riley swore before tearing towards the temple. Ember ran after him. Hamsah was still in danger, Xinguang was still in danger, the Elder Council was probably dead, and there was something building in her mind, an inescapable fear that threatened to swallow her whole if she thought about it.

Because Dante was somewhere in that temple, too. And even the sections that weren’t reduced to rubble wouldn’t hold for much longer.

The smoke above them was thick and black, sending a beacon into the air, but the dust was settling, so it was easier to see as she ran towards what had been the entrance. Riley was kneeling on the ground beside a figure, leveraging his weight against a piece of wall that had crushed him. Ember scrambled to help. They managed to move it just enough for Hamsah to wrench his leg out from under it. 

“Everyone else?” Hamsah asked.

“I have Garret and Ember, I don’t know where Xinguang is, I don’t know where— the Council’s dead, probably. We can try to get into the parts that are still safe, look for survivors, but we need to wait until we know the danger’s passed… your leg?”

“I can walk. That’s all that matters. Xinguang’s the most likely to be alive,” Hamsah said. “We find him first. Then… then—” his breath caught as he looked at Ember. He looked back towards the temple. “Oh my god.” He broke off coughing, clutching his ribs. Even in their natural form, smoke this thick was hard to withstand. Riley knealt beside him and helped him scramble to his feet.

“Xinguang!” Ember called. “Where the hell are—”

She was the one who saw it. She saw Xinguang in the midst of the rubble, a hand shielding his face as he looked at the remains of the Lung Miao. He was closer to the building than he would’ve been thrown, which meant he had come back to it. Parts of his clothes were smoking, and his nose was broken and bleeding, but he didn’t seem to be taking that in.

She saw a figure appear in the smoke. Her skin was pale, nearly paper-white in contrast to the suit that she wore. She saw the figure draw a knife as she approached him. He was turning, he was preparing to shift and fight back—

The knife hit him in the stomach and ripped up through his chest. He stumbled. The woman put the knife back on her belt and grabbed him by the throat. Ember was running. The woman tore open his jacket and took out a scroll of paper. Ember could feel her lungs heat with dragonfire. 

Stealth let Xinguang drop to the ground and turned towards Ember, a dangerous grin on her face.

Ember didn’t feel the shot. At least, not in the way she expected to. She felt a force hit her stomach and throw her back. She saw black smoke blotting out the sky above her, felt the warmth of the flame to her right, but she didn’t feel the shot. She only felt a sharp pain in her head when she hit the ground.

Then she felt nothing.

*

When Ember woke up, she was in the courtyard. Her head throbbed, her stomach  _ burned,  _ and when she regained her sight, the air was still thick with black smoke. But it was quiet. It was...

_ “Namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari…” _

Ember blinked slowly as she turned her head. Her vision was still blurry around the edges, but she could see Jade kneeling on the ground. Her hair was down, tangled, and she wasn’t wearing anything other than the jacket draped over her shoulders. 

She was holding Xinguang in her arms, her forehead pressed into the crook of his neck. He was covered in blood, and his body was limp as Jade rocked him back and forth, whispering words like he could hear them, like he was still her little brother instead of... 

He looked so small, laying in her arms.

_ “Namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari…” _

“Ember?”

The voice was soft. It was Garret’s. Ember couldn’t look away from the scene.

“You— you were lucky. The bullet went clean through, and it didn’t hit anything vital. Riley’s gone down to get to the jet. He’ll land up here to get us all supplies, but it won’t be much longer. You’ll be okay. You’re a dragon. You heal...”

_ “Namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari…” _

“Ember?”

“I saw Stealth.” Ember didn’t recognize her own voice when she spoke. “She has the census.”

“I know.”

“I saw her kill…”

Ember didn’t finish the sentence. Jade didn’t acknowledge either of them. Xinguang didn’t move, even though he would’ve have stood for being cradled like that. She knew that much. He had always been paler than Jade, so perhaps his skin didn’t actually look like wax. It was just the contrast between them. He could be sleeping.

_ “Namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari…” _

“Garret,” Ember rasped.

“Yeah?”

“Where—” she paused. Took a shallow breath. “Where’s my brother?”

The silence hurt more than the gunshot ever could. She didn’t feel the ground drop out from beneath her, she didn’t feel the weight of the world press down on her, she didn’t even feel that surge of denial she felt when Wes told her that there was no fixing her brother. She kept watching Jade, crying on Xinguang’s shoulder, and wished that the world would stop.

“I’m so sorry, Ember. Hamsah and I tried to find him, I promise… I’m sorry.”

Ember blinked, and didn’t respond. For the first time since setting foot on this mountain, it was finally warm. She could smell smoke in the air. Iron, too. 

Xinguang’s eyes were glassy.

_ “Namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari, namaig uuchalaari…” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Namaig Uuchalaari: Phonetic translation of "I'm sorry" in Mongolian.
> 
> So. 
> 
> I'd like to extend my sympathies to literally everyone, including those who got attached to Xinguang, those who wanted Riley to get through this time with mental health, Dante stans, and the Elder Council as a whole. OCs make great canon fodder.
> 
> I have a lot of work to do in the epilogue, so I don't know when it's coming. But it is very important to note that this story is incomplete, so don't skip it. There are two more installments of this thing before I'm allowed to rest, and one of them will not be comprehensible without the epilogue.
> 
> Feel free to scream and/or cry at me in the comment section. Your tears feed my muse.


	15. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story took eleven months to write, and five months to post. Despite this, the world did not end in fire and blood. I think this should be a lesson to my rampant, unyielding, perfectionism. That being said, it will not be, and my perfectionism has learned nothing from this experience except that plagues make me write a LOT. 
> 
> This arc has been a true journey; I'm almost sad to see it go. But not too sad; after all, there will still be more to write in this verse. Continue on, my readers.

The worst part was that he knew what was happening before everything went white.

He heard the stone crack before everything threw him off center. He managed to get to his feet and start running before the world collapsed in on him. He nearly got to an exit before he was crushed under the weight of the temple that had provided him with safety for the past three weeks. And then everything spun into white, bright and blinding and inescapable.

For a moment, Dante was positive that he was still in that hotel room where Cobalt had shot him. That his mind, in some desperate attempt to salvage his life, his sanity, had invented the past two and a half months in the minutes it had left. But it could only do so much in the moments between life and death, and now his time was up, his brain was finally shutting down, because nothing in the world could change the fact that he wasn’t built to survive a gunshot at point-blank range.

And then there was nothing.

He came into consciousness slowly. He couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t move, but he could  _ feel. _

He wanted to die if it meant he’d stop hurting. His head, his ribs, his limbs were all in a pain so intense he couldn’t distinguish one part of his body from the other. If someone cut off his arm, he doubted he’d be able to notice. He was just a tangle of exposed nerves like those half-formed  _ things  _ in the Vessel labs, just a heap of electric impulses that had been torn apart until he couldn’t tell one type of pain for the other. He couldn’t feel the environment around him. He didn’t even know if he was sitting or laying down. And he couldn’t remember why everything  _ hurt. _

_ “He’s persistent, I’ll give him that. I can see the synthetic DNA in him for sure. It’s a shame that he was a Chameleon, I heard Lilith wanted him… The Elder Council died on impact, yes. I didn’t give them the time to shift. There’s one surviving Xuan, but I doubt she’ll last long… Yes, Cobalt and his crew escaped. But they weren’t my mission, now, were they?... He has a few hours left in him. Probably. Gonna need surgery, though. Or maybe several. I’ll get him to the Elder Wyrm as soon as he’s stabilized.” _

The voice was faint and fuzzy, like he was underwater, but they drifted past the veil of darkness and  _ pain  _ enough to hear them. He couldn’t string enough of a coherent through to make any  _ sense  _ of the words, but he could register that he wasn’t alone. Maybe someone could help make the pain stop. At least get him to the point where he could feel his body beyond the it. He couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

_ “Are you awake, Mr. Hill? I wouldn’t recommend it, with the state you’re in, I’d imagine it hurts quite a bit. Try not to move too much, if you can understand me. It would be a shame if you died before I got you home.” _

His ears started to ring, and his weak consciousness gave up entirely.

The pain had turned from paralyzing to agonizing the next time he woke up, and he wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse. The light was a blinding white that seared through his skull, and his nerves were being pulled apart and doused in acid. He couldn’t feel  _ anything  _ other than the sheer suffering coursing through him. It wasn’t just in his body, it was in his mind, it was  _ him,  _ it was all he was. 

There was noise, but he couldn’t understand it. There was light, but he couldn’t use it to see his surroundings. There was feeling, but he didn’t  _ want it,  _ he wished that the god forsaken bullet had paralysed him properly, anything to escape  _ this. _

This was hell. He was sure of it.

Somehow, miraculously, he hadn’t died in that hotel room. The past two months were not his brain trying to find an alternative future before it ran out of time.

Dante woke up to someone patting his cheek. The pain was still there— oh, it was  _ there—  _ but he could feel his body through it. He could pinpoint what hurt most. He squeezed his eyes shut before he managed to open them into slits. The world was bright and blurry, but he could see more than white. 

“The prodigal son returns to us, after all. You were touch and go for a few days,” a voice said, loud enough to make Dante cringe. “Can you rank your pain from one to ten, for me? For a baseline.”

“Bright,” Dante rasped. His voice sounded weak.

“One to ten?”

“Where— where am I?”

There was a sharp crack, and Dante’s head snapped to the side. He gave a shriek, more out of surprise than anything else, but it made his vision spin and his head throb, and he could feel stitches near the back of his neck strain. 

He remembered the Lung Miao. He remembered it collapsing down on him. He remembered pain, scathing and inescapable. A hazy voice, talking about something he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Bright lights and fear and agony. And this.

Dante’s breath stilled.

“You’re where I should’ve put you a long time ago, Dante Hill,” a voice said, and if Dante didn’t want to die before, he did now, because he recognized this voice. It wasn’t the voice of the doctor— the scientist— that just hit him, even though he recognized that voice, too. But this voice, smooth and confident, was a voice he hoped to never hear again.

“You see, when you and your  _ friends _ destroyed my labs, you took out two decades of research. We’re lucky to have a few more Vessels, but they’re a precious resource, thanks to you,” the voice continued. “So, you leave us with a question: Where do we get a disposable vessel?”

The air in the room was cold. He hated the cold. It was the temperature of the basement of the farmhouse, stiff meetings in board rooms, and the labs where he first trained the Vessels. He  _ hated  _ those labs. He hated them knowing what he learned in the underground, and he had hated them when he had worked there. 

“I trust that Ember has told you the truth of your heritage. What I didn’t tell her, and what she couldn’t know, was that, while she matches my DNA completely, you only have about forty percent of it. She was my first and only successful vessel, but you… you are the first  _ synthetic  _ vessel.”

Dante could feel his breath scratch his broken ribs and his throat as he turned his head towards the voice. The Elder Wyrm smiled back at him, cold and cruel. He knew that smile. He had once known it well enough that it didn’t make his breath freeze in his lungs, but that was before leaving Talon, before he was part of the underground and smiles weren’t dangerous. Before he spoke with Wanyan Lianhua and he learned that it wasn’t natural to fear his elders. Now, it made every torn and aching muscle in his body seize up like a mouse under the gaze of a snake. Now, it made him want to run, because he didn’t have any illusions of safety.

“You were a breakthrough. And, with some time, you can be one again.”

Her heels clicked on the tile as the oldest dragon in the world approached him, taking his chin in her hand. Her nails dug into bruised and battered skin as she forced him to look her in the eye. Green, toxic, just like his, just like Ember’s, but possessing something— no,  _ lacking  _ something in their depths. 

And just like that, he knew that he’d never be safe again.

“Welcome home,  _ my son _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) I promised :) not to kill :) Dante Hill :) :) As you can see :) he is still alive :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this segment of Chasing Down the Gods; although it caused no small amount of frustration on my end, it was a lot of fun to branch completely from canon in terms of plot and character-goals, and I really liked having a Viper-heavy plot line. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Funnily enough, I'm already working on the next installment, but it might be a while until you see it. (There is a method to my madness, and hopefully it means you don't have a crazy-long hiatus and I get to work on other universes). I'm hoping to post near the beginning of summer break. 
> 
> I feel that this is a good time to mention that I like Talon on other platforms, such as [ Tumblr ](talonsaga-trash.tumblr.com). If you want to send me asks about my past works/WIPs, or just look through my archive of fanart, that is where you can do it. (I do take requests, but there is no guarantee I will do them. If you offer predictions/HCs about my current universes, I will nab them as I please).
> 
> See you for the next installment.

**Author's Note:**

> If you could take a minute out of your day to drop me a review, it would mean the world to me. Thanks for your support.


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